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EDGAR ALLAN POE 
From an old dayuei'reotype 



JEerriU'fii engltsl) Cejrts 



THE RAVEN 

By EDGAR ALLAN POE 

THE COURTSHIP OF 
MILES STANDISH 

By HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

SNOW-BOUND 

By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND 
NOTES BY CHARLES ROBERT GASTON 
PH.D., INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, RICHMOND 
HILL HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY 




NEW YORK 

CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 

44-60 East Twenty-third Street 



As 



Copyright, 1909 

BY 

CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 



CU258824 



Jn memorp of 
GEORGE R. CARPENTER 

THE PRECISE RHETORICIAN, THE CULTURED 

CRITIC OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, 

THE MAN OF BROAD 

SYMPATHIES 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
JlerriU'a enffliglj Ce^ts 

This series of books will include in complete editions 
those masterpieces of English Literature that are best adapted 
for the use of schools and colleges. The editors of the 
several volumes will be chosen for their special qualifications 
in connection with the texts to be issued under their indi- 
vidual supervision, but familiarity with the practical needs 
of the classroom, no less than sound scholarship, will char- 
acterize the editing of every book in the series. 

In connection with each text, a critical and historical 
introduction, including a sketch of the life of the author and 
his relation to the thought of his time, critical opinions of 
the work in question chosen from the great body of English 
criticism, and, where possible, a portrait of the author, will 
be given. Ample explanatory notes of such passages in the 
text as call for special attention will be supplied, but irrel- 
evant annotation and explanations of the obvious will be 
rigidly excluded. 

CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction: 

Life of Poe 7 

Life of Longfellow 12 

Life of Whittier 20 

Critical Comments: 

Poe, Longfellow, and Whittier 27 

Edgar Allan Poe . 28 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 30 

John Greenleaf Whittier 32 

Poems: 

The Raven 37 

The Courtship of Miles Standish 47 

Snow-Bound 129 

Notes: 

The Raven 161 

The Courtship of Miles Standish 166 

Snow-Bound 179 

Examination Questions: 

The Raven 193 

The Courtship of Miles Standish ..... 194 

Snow-Bound 195 



INTRODUCTION 

LIFE OF POE, 1809-1849 

The Edgar Allan Poe School of English is one of the 
six departments of the University of Virginia. Though 
Poe disgraced the University while he was in attendance, 
his subsequent literary works have brought him such 
fame that he is now known as Virginia's most distinguished 
student. This change in the attitude of his alma mater 
toward him is similar to the change in the attitude of 
the world toward so erratic a genius. Poe has been 
reviled as an atheist, a sot, and a wife-deserter; he has 
been condemned as a writer possessed of no great message 
that is worthy of long remembrance, but skilled only in 
a limited, morbid field of mechanically excellent verse 
and of ingenious but shallow prose. On the other hand, 
he has been latterly praised as a good man, to be pitied 
for his high-strung temperament and his one failing of 
fondness for drink, and as the greatest American writer 
in both poetry and prose. The reason for these widely 
varying estimates is that Poe lived romantically and 
abnormally from the beginning to the end of his forty 
variegated years. The proper estimate of his life as a 
man and his worth as a writer no doubt lies between the 
two extremes. It is certain that he drank to excess, but 
it is equally certain that he supported his wife faithfully 
to the best of his ability. Nearly all the critics now assign 
to him high rank as the possessor of a brilliant intellect, 
as the creator of the detective story type, and as the author 
of a wonderfully fascinating, mysterious poem, "The 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

Raven." If we depart somewhat from the grouping of 
even the best biographer of Poe, i.e., George E. Wood- 
berry, we may get the clearest idea of Poe's life by tracing 
it in two periods. The first period, from 1809 to 1831, 
started him in literature as a profession. The second 
period, from 1831 to 1849, was devoted entirely to writing 
and editorial work. It was during his second period that 
he composed "The Raven." 

His mother, an actress, was, at the time of his birth, 
January 19, 1809, filling an engagement in Boston. His 
father, David Poe, a native of Baltimore, had ceased the 
practice of law and become a mediocre actor. At the 
age of two, Poe, left an orphan, was adopted by John 
Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant of Richmond, Vir- 
ginia. Though not able to understand the moods and 
peculiarities of his adopted son, Mr. Allan gave Poe oppor- 
tunities for a good education. From the age of six to 
eleven he was in Europe, two years being spent in school 
at a London suburb, Stoke Newington. His story "Wil- 
liam Wilson" relates his Stoke Newington memories. 
Then he lived for six years in luxury in the large red 
brick house which was the home of his foster parents in 
Richmond. Among the boys of his own age, he was 
a clever boxer, a strong swimmer, a swift runner, and a 
good jumper, a broad jump of twenty-one feet, six inches, 
with a running start of twenty yards, being his best record ; 
but his aristocratic Richmond companions made the proud 
boy feel an outcast by reminding him that his parents 
had been strolling players. 

In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia, at Char- 
lottesville. Here he roomed first on the lawn with a 
Richmond boy, but, having a fist fight with him, ending 
in friendship but separation as room-mates, Poe moved 
to No. 13, West Range. He used to take long solitary 
walks in the mountains, but was also a leader in hilarious 
drinking and card-playing, which involved him in such 



INTRODUCTION 9 

debt that Allan removed him from the University at the 
end of a year and put him to work in his counting-room. 
Chafing under the restraint of a steady life, he ran away 
to Boston, where in 1827 he obtained a publisher for an 
anonymous volume of verse, Tamerlane and Other Poems, 
and two years later another volume, containing his name 
on the title page, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, 
was published in Baltimore. Meanwhile he served in 
the army creditably for two years, after which his foster 
parent obtained for him a West Point cadetship. He 
entered the Academy in July, 1830, but, disliking the 
discipline, he deliberately set out to get himself discharged, 
which he easily accomplished; he was court-martialed 
and dismissed in March, 1831. Without hope of any 
further aid from the rich Mr. Allan, he was now left to 
make his own way by literature. 

From 1831 to his death in 1849, Poe was a hack writer, 
who fortunately turned out some great literature. During 
these eighteen years he was employed on numerous 
papers and magazines as editor and contributor. When- 
ever he obtained a regular editorial position, Poe chafed 
under the restraint, just as he had done in his youth in 
business and in West Point; yet, driven by necessity, he 
worked conscientiously to hold his positions. He obtained 
his first editorship, that of the Southern Literary Messenger, 
published in Richmond, through the reputation that came 
to him from his one hundred dollar prize story, " A Ms. 
Found in a Bottle," printed in a Baltimore paper. In 
1836 he was married to Virginia Clemm, a fourteen-year- 
old Baltimore cousin of his. Leaving Richmond, he was 
for five years employed in editorial work in Philadelphia 
on The Gentleman's Magazine and on Graham's Magazine. 
Then in 1842 he moved to New York, working there for 
The Evening Mirror and The Broadway Journal. 

While he was employed editorially on the magazines 
and newspapers named, he contributed to these and other 



10 INTRODUCTION 

papers many critical essays, short stories, and short poems. 
Among his short stories of mystery and analytical power 
are "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Masque of 
the Red Death," "Marie Roget," "Ligeia," "The Black 
Cat," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the 
House of Usher," and "The Gold Bug," one of the best 
short stories in the English language. In his stories he 
shows no particular power in character-drawing, but in 
supernatural weirdness and horror he is unsurpassed. 
His critical articles on the literary men of New York and 
on the poets and poetry of America aroused much bitter 
feeling, as in the case of his strictures on the poet Rufus 
W. Griswold, who had been his friend, but who was so 
irritated by Poe's criticisms that in his biography of 
Poe he seems to have set out to get even by making untrue 
or exaggerated statements. In one of his critical works, 
Poe attacked Longfellow as a plagiarist, and condemned 
the didactic tone of his earlier poetry, though he acknowl- 
edged that Longfellow's poetry possessed some excellent 
traits. Yet Poe was the first well-known critic to point 
out the genius of the shy young novelist Hawthorne. A 
very ingenious general critical study by Poe is the one 
entitled, "The Philosophy of Composition," which pur- 
ports to explain the method used in the writing of "The 
Raven." Among Poe's poems are "To Helen, "To One 
in Paradise," "Annabel Lee," "Ulalume," "To My 
Mother," "The Haunted Palace," "The City in the Sea," 
"Lenore," "Dreamland," "Israfel," "The Conqueror 
Worm," "The Bells," and "The Raven." 

In "The Raven," his most popular poem, there are hints 
of the style of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Yet Poe's 
own style is distinct and individual. He had a natural 
perception of beauty, a finely rhythmical sense. His 
technical mastery of verse was wonderful. He took the 
greatest pains to perfect the form of his poetry. He was 
always conscientious and sincere, but was limited in his 



INTRODUCTION 11 

range. He does not treat of the universal themes which 
are at the basis of the great works of such poets as Milton 
and Wordsworth. The theme of ''The Raven," for 
instance, is merely the resistless disaster of a man's des- 
tiny. The poem is extraordinarily vivid, yet it leaves 
such indistinct pictures in the mind that artists have the 
greatest difficulty in illustrating it. It has such a metrical 
charm that, like "The Bells," it is a favorite of elocu- 
tionists. 

"The Raven" was originally published in the New 
York Evening Mirror, January 29, 1845, copied from ad- 
vance sheets of The American Whig Review for February, 
1845. It appeared also in the New York Broadway 
Journal, February 8, 1845, and, revised, in the edition of 
Poe's poems published in 1845 by Wiley and Putnam, 
161 Broadway, New York. In the copy of the 1845 
edition, called the Lorimer Graham copy, Poe made 
marginal corrections which are recorded by Woodberry 
and Stedman in their edition. 

There are conflicting stories concerning the time and 
the circumstances of the composition of the poem. In 
1842, Poe, then at Saratoga Springs, is said to have men- 
tioned the poem to a lady who had been a contributor 
to the Evening Mirror. Next summer he showed her a 
draft of the poem. Another story is that he offered the 
poem in the office of George R. Graham and received 
fifteen dollars for it to aid his starving wife. Still another 
story is that he composed the poem after ten o'clock one 
evening in order to secure medicine for his sick wife. 
Again, it is said that he composed the poem one day and 
then declaimed it as was his custom in the hearing of boon 
companions in a New York tavern when he was drunk. 
One more story is that he composed the poem stanza by 
stanza, accepting the criticisms made by his friends. 
W. F. Gill, in his biography, says that Poe wrote the poem 
in the winter of 1844 in a plain, old-fashioned frame house 



12 INTRODUCTION 

near the corner of Eighty-fourth Street and the Boule- 
vard Avenue, where he and his wife and his wife's mother 
were then boarding. 

All these stories of the time and the circumstances of 
the writing of " The Raven " give a lively idea of the strug- I 
gling years of the poor journalist in New York. He had 
hard work to earn enough to support his family. Occa- 
sionally he broke the bounds of sobriety and made it still 
harder to gain sustenance. Some of those who worked 
in the editorial offices with him report that he was uni- 
formly courteous and for long periods steady. He lived 
from 1844 to 1849 in Kingsbridge Road, Fordham, New 
York, in a cottage preserved now as a Poe museum. 
In 1847 his wife died. Two years later in the city of 
Baltimore he was found insensible in the street, was taken 
to a hospital, and there died on October 7, 1849. 

So much seems clear regarding the life of an author 
whose actions have been the subject of endless con- 
troversy. In conclusion it is sufficient to say that the 
centenary of his birth was marked by enthusiastic gather- 
ings in the various large cities of the United States to do 
honor to his genius as one of the foremost of American 
writers. 

LIFE OF LONGFELLOW, 1807-1882 

In the same way in which many Englishmen get their 
history from Shakespeare's plays, many Americans learn 
theirs from Longfellow's poems. Americans' ideas of 
New England colonial life are, for example, largely ob- 
tained from Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish, 
rather than from the authentic old chronicles or the 
modern histories. As Shakespeare used the facts to suit 
himself, so did Longfellow. Longfellow has been as much 
admired and praised in the United States as Shakespeare 
in England. Longfellow has for two generations been the 
most popular American poet. His poetry has been thus 



INTRODUCTION 13 

extraordinarily popular because it appeals most to simple 
tastes that demand concreteness and sympathy in the 
literature which they praise; and yet it appeals also to 
the heart of the most cultured scholars. His life was so 
simple and his character was so amiable that every one 
who knew anything about him — and every one knew 
something about him — loved him as if he were a per- 
sonal friend. The simple, tranquil life of this represent- 
ative of the best American ideals of his age, as related in 
the authoritative biography, that by Samuel Longfellow 
published in 1891 in three volumes, is interesting in spite 
of its normal, not to say commonplace, happiness. For 
almost fifty years (from 1807 to 1854), Longfellow lived 
a scholar's life, and then for nearly thirty years (from 
1854 to 1882), he lived as a poet and man of letters. His 
Courtship of Miles Standish was written and published 
during this second period of his life. 

In many schools, the twenty-seventh of February is 
known as Longfellow day, for that was the birthday of 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1807 at Portland, Maine. 
He was the son of a lawyer who could trace his ancestry 
back for more than a hundred and fifty years to an Ed- 
ward Longfellow, of Horsforth, England, through a line 
of sturdy and mostly prosperous colonists — blacksmiths, 
schoolmasters, judges. His mother's father was General 
Peleg Wadsworth, a Revolutionary soldier of distinction; 
his mother was a descendant of Priscilla Alden. Long- 
fellow was named after Henry, one of the brothers of his 
mother, and was given also the family name, Wadsworth. 
At General Wadsworth 's home, which was the first brick 
house built in Portland, and which is still standing (ad- 
mission twenty-five cents), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
spent his boyhood. His delight in the childhood life in 
Portland is evident in his poem, "My Lost Youth." He 
had plenty of books to read in his father's library — the 
poems of Milton, Pope, Dryden, Cowper, Moore; Don 



14 INTRODUCTION 

Quixote and the successive numbers of Irving 's Sketch- 
Book, which began to appear in 1819. He did not read, 
like Poe, the poems of Shelley, Keats, and Byron, the 
passionate romanticists of the early nineteenth century. 
At the private schools which he attended he is spoken of 
as a handsome schoolboy, thoughtful but not melan- 
choly; not averse to the quieter sports, but more fond of 
a book under the trees. His home life was idyllic in its 
charm. At the age of thirteen the boy was made happy 
by seeing his first poem printed anonymously in the Port- 
land Gazette. 

When he was fifteen he entered Bowdoin College, at 
Brunswick, Maine. Probably the reason why he did not 
go to his father's college, Harvard, was that his father 
was a trustee of Bowdoin, which had been opened in 1802. 
At Bowdoin he knew Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce. 
His college life simply continued the training he had 
received at home and in the private schools. He studied 
faithfully the mathematics, natural sciences, and phi- 
losophy of the course. From his study of the classics and 
his reading in the college library he acquired a perspicu- 
ous but balanced English prose style. While at Bow- 
doin he wrote verses for the newspapers ; fourteen of these 
were published the year after his graduation in a volume 
entitled Miscellaneous Poems selected from the United 
States Literary Gazette. Of these the best known is " Hymn 
of the Moravian Nuns." He finished his course at the 
age of eighteen, and was asked to go abroad to prepare 
himself for a Bowdoin professorship of modern languages. 
His father allowed him six hundred dollars a year for a 
three years' stay in Europe. 

Thirsting for the springs of old culture, reverently alert 
for impressions of European life, the young American 
scholar took passage for Havre. His youthful enjoyment 
of all that he saw and felt is evident on every page of the 
notes which he published several years after his return. 



INTRODUCTION 15 

The extent of his travels is indicated by a sentence from 
the early part of his book : — 

" In this my pilgrimage, ' I have passed many lands and 
countries, and searched many full strange places.' I 
have traversed France from Normandy to Navarre; 
smoked my pipe in a Flemish inn; floated through Hol- 
land in a Trekschuit; trimmed my midnight lamp in a 
German university ; wandered and mused amid the classic 
scenes of Italy ; and listened to the gay guitar and merry 
Castanet on the borders of the blue Guadalquivir. " (From 
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea.) A character- 
istic passage showing how he relished his European travel 
is this: "My recollections of Spain are of the most 
lively and delightful kind. The character of the soil and 
of its inhabitants, — the stormy mountains and free 
spirits of the North, — the prodigal luxuriance and gay 
voluptuousness of the South, — the history and tradi- 
tions of the past, resembling more the fables of romance 
than the solemn chronicle of events, — a soft and yet 
majestic language that falls like martial music on the 
ear, and a literature rich in the attractive lore of poetry 
and fiction, — these, but not these alone, are my remi- 
niscences of Spain." 

On his return to the United States, he took up at Bow- 
doin the wearing work of teaching, yet he entered upon it 
with enthusiasm in the belief that it would allow him time 
to write as he might be inclined. Instead of doing origi- 
inal work, however, he made text-books, excellent of 
their kind and for their purpose. He edited French 
texts, translated a French grammar, and made French, 
Spanish, and Italian readers. His recitations and lec- 
tures he prepared for painstakingly. The students liked 
him; he enjoyed them. His influence during his six years 
of teaching at Bowdoin was of the best. Other colleges 
tried to secure his services, but he preferred Bowdoin until 
a call came to follow Ticknor in the chair of modern Ian- 



16 INTRODUCTION 

guages at Harvard. Longfellow accepted and went 
abroad for further study, particularly of German, which 
he never cared for so much as the French and Spanish 
and Italian languages and literatures; in these he had 
already become extremely proficient. His acceptance of 
the Harvard professorship took him in the autumn of 
1836 to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where, living for the 
remaining years of his life, he became a quiet but power- 
ful influence for widening culture, and where, having 
more time to himself than at Bowdoin, he became the 
chief of the " Cambridge Poets." During his Harvard 
teaching he published several volumes of prose and 
poetry: Hyperion, a Romance, 1839; Voices of the Night, 
1839, which contained translations and nine original 
poems; Ballads, and Other Poems, 1841; Poems on Sla- 
very, 1842; The Spanish Student, a three-act play, 1843; 
The Belfry of Bruges, and Other Poems, 1845; Evangeline, 
1847; Kavanagh, a Tale, 1849; The Seaside and the Fire- 
side, 1819; and The Golden Legend, 1851. In the year 
1854, he was succeeded at Harvard by his friend James 
Russell Lowell. 

Thus far no mention has been made of Longfellow's 
domestic affairs. In 1831, at the age of twenty-two, he 
was married to Mary Storer Potter, of Portland. With 
her, for four years, he lived a contented, peaceful life. 
Mrs. Longfellow was beautiful in appearance, happy in 
disposition, and sympathetic and appreciative in her 
husband's intellectual work. The shock of her death in 
Holland while he was studying in preparation for his 
Harvard professorship changed Longfellow from a youth 
in spirit to a grown man. At Cambridge he took rooms 
in the Craigie House. This fine old colonial building is 
now pointed out to every Cambridge visitor as the Long- 
fellow home, for here Longfellow lived the rest of his life, 
except for summers on the New England coast and several 
European journeys. In the hero of Hyperion he had 



INTRODUCTION 17 

sketched his own bitterness of thought during the year 
following the death of his first wife, and in the heroine he 
had sketched the character of Miss Frances Appleton, 
who became in July, 1843, his second wife. At their 
marriage, Miss Appleton's father bought for them the 
Craigie mansion. Here, for some years, their life was 
like the home life of the best New England families of 
the day — children at play, fireside reading, entertain- 
ments, calls, concerts, plays, enough work to keep the 
domestic delight from palling by monotony of idleness. 
In the year 1854 Longfellow and his wife decided that 
they could afford to live without his salary as professor, 
and he resigned. 

From 1854 till his death in 1882 Longfellow, relieved 
entirely from professional duties, did some of his best 
work as poet and man of letters. He continued to dream 
along in the peaceful existence already started at Cam- 
bridge, all the time growing in the affections of the people 
till the whole nation came to love him. Among the 
literary men of New England he was the dean. In the 
gatherings of the Saturday Club, which included Whittier, 
Emerson, Lowell, and Hawthorne among its members, 
Longfellow took particular joy. He was long a friend 
of Senator Charles Sumner. The young scholar Andrew 
D. White visited Longfellow in 1867 at his beautiful 
summer cottage at Nahant. In his Autobiography White 
speaks of Longfellow as "a *nost lovely being." As they 
sat on the veranda looking out over the ocean and dis- 
cussing political events, the poet turned to the young 
scholar and statesman and said, "Mr. White, don't you 
think Horace Greeley a very useless sort of man?" The 
dreamy poet could not understand at all the point of 
view of the practical man of affairs, the great editor of the 
New York Tribune. Four years later White dined with 
the poet at his Cambridge home. The host enjoyed 
showing the places in this house that were connected 



18 INTRODUCTION 

with interesting passages in the life of Washington when 
he occupied the house. These details given by Dr. White 
in his recollections afford a characteristic glimpse of the 
life of the celebrated Cambridge man of letters in this 
period of poetic ease. 

In that curious back-hand of his, not so legible and 
print-like as Poe's handwriting, Longfellow produced in 
this second period enough original poetry, translation, and 
editorial work to make a small library. In narrative 
poetry he published The Song of Hiawatha, 1855, consid- 
ered by many critics his greatest achievement because it 
is the nearest approach to an American epic. Narrative 
also is The Courtship of Miles Standish, published in 
1858. This seems to me his greatest poem because it 
dwells with consummate poetical art upon a world-appre- 
ciated theme and because it gives with absolute faithful- 
ness the spirit of the early New England Puritanism. 
Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863, is a popular collection of 
local pictures and old-world stories in pleasing verse. 
His most ambitious production was published in 1872 
under the heading Christus, a Mystery; it consisted of 
three parts, " The Divine Tragedy," " The Golden Legend," 
and "The New England Tragedies," and except for the 
second part, which had been already printed, is practi- 
cally unread among its author's works. His other prin- 
cipal volumes of poems are "Aftermath," "The Hanging 
of the Crane," "Masque of Pandora," "Keramos," 
"Ultima Thule," and "In the Harbor." During this 
period he composed a group of sonnets which easily 
rank him as the chief American sonnet writer. The trans- 
lation of Dante's Divine Comedy, 1870, is the crowning 
achievement of the scholar, postponed till his time of 
ease. Though not in every respect a great translation 
of Dante's epic, it is true to the original and not lacking 
in Dante's poetic fire. Longfellow's editorial work in- 
cluded the editing of thirty-one volumes of Poems of 



INTRODUCTION 19 

Places. Such was the extensive work of the man of letters 
in Cambridge, from 1854 to 1882, in original poetry, in 
translation, and in compilation. 

The life at Cambridge was not all happiness, for, eigh- 
teen years after his second marriage, his wife was burned 
so badly by the upturning of a candle on her dress that 
she soon died. Thereafter Longfellow lived in the Cam- 
bridge home with his children, the care and education of 
whom occupied his thoughts to the banishment of lone- 
liness. It was only when his distinguished friends died, 
one by one, that he began to feel the weight of his years. 
In March, 1882, he died, and was buried in Cambridge. 
The period of his life in Cambridge was, curiously enough, 
almost exactly the time of the supremacy of New England 
as a literary center. 

In the sketch of Longfellow's life, little mention has 
been made of specific short poems, such as " A Psalm of 
Life," "The Rainy Day " (written in the Portland home), 
"Excelsior," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Build- 
ing of the Ship," "The Village Blacksmith," and "Paul 
Revere 's Ride," which every schoolboy knows. It would 
have been superfluous to discuss these poems, for they 
have always appealed to the hearts of the American 
people and have done as much as the longer narrative 
poems to give their author his extraordinary popularity. 
But it was by such longer poems as The Courtship of 
Miles Standish that Longfellow established his claim to 
a place among the poets of world-wide appeal, and it 
was by such writing that he merited recognition in West- 
minster Abbey, the temple of fame for the English-speak- 
ing nations. There, two years after his death, a bust of 
Longfellow was placed, with ceremonies which testified 
to the esteem in which he is held by all who speak the 
English language. 



20 INTRODUCTION 

LIFE OF WHITTIER, 1807-1892 

In The Appreciation of Literature, George E. Wood- 
berry speaks of Whittier 's Snow-Bounal, Goldsmith's 
Deserted Village, and Burns 's The Cotter's Saturday Night 
as imperishable monuments to that "home-feeling which 
is so profound an element in the character as well as the 
affections of English-speaking people the world over." 
Inevitably popular are the poets who express this home- 
feeling. Next to Longfellow, Whittier has come closer 
to the heart of the nation than any other American poet. 
Known everywhere as the household Quaker poet, he 
is celebrated also as the poet who did more than any other 
to crystallize northern sentiment against slavery. These 
two phases of his work seem contradictory, but when his 
life is read in such an interesting and discriminating 
biography as that by George R. Carpenter in the American 
Men of Letters series, the contradiction is found to be 
apparent and not real, for Whittier was a poet appealing 
all the time to the best instincts of his nation. His life 
may best be considered in three periods : the first including 
his boyhood and early efforts at literature; the second, 
his freedom work; and the third, his life as a mature, 
tranquil poet. It was in this third period that he wrote 
his greatest poem, Snow-Bound. 

The house where he was born on December 17, 1807, 
is one mile to the northeast of Haverhill, Essex County, 
Massachusetts, near Great Pond, known also as Lake 
Kenoza. This farmhouse is the Scene of Snow-Bound and 
is now marked by a bronze tablet. Whittier 's great-great- 
grandfather built the house about 1688; Whittiers had 
lived there ever since, all of them substantial pioneers and 
farmers of good repute, all of them husbands of farmers' 
daughters. The great-grandfather married a Quakeress, 
whose religion he adopted. The grandfather married 
Sarah Greenleaf. The poet was given the name of his 



INTRODUCTION 21 

father and the family name of his grandmother. John 
Greenleaf Whittier started in life with a hundred and 
fifty years of New England independent struggle for 
existence back of him. In his youth he continued the 
struggle, but with a weaker body and more sensitive 
temperament than his ancestors possessed. He worked 
on the ancestral farm, with intermissions of shoe-making 
and academy attendance and school-teaching, until he 
was twenty-one. When he was nearly nineteen his first 
printed poem appeared in the Newbury port Free Press. 
Whittier had been led early to the writing of poetry by 
his reading of Burns, Gray, Cowper, Scott, and Mrs. 
Hemans ; then when he was disappointed in love he read 
Byron. All of his own early poetry was imitative of 
the poets whom he had read. The Newbury port paper 
was edited by William Lloyd Garrison who subsequently 
became the great anti-slavery agitator and who influ- 
enced Whittier in this direction. In 1828 Whittier wrote 
to Garrison a letter commending his views on slavery, 
intemperance, and war. 

Through Garrison's recommendation, Whittier, then 
just of age, left the farm and became editor, at nine dollars 
a week, of The American Manufacturer, published in 
Boston. After seven months he was called home to 
Haverhill by the sickness of his father, who died the next 
year. During the interval Whittier worked the farm 
and edited the local paper. A month after his father's 
death he became editor of The New England Review, of 
Hartford, Connecticut. This position made him conver- 
sant with the political events of the time, brought him a 
wide friendship among editors, and a national reputation 
through the copying of his Hartford articles in other 
papers. In his leisure hours in Boston and Hartford 
"the gay young Quaker" read much in the best English 
fiction and poetry. His first book, Legends of New Eng- 
land, exhibiting a little of the weirdness later character- 



22 INTRODUCTION 

istic of Poe, was published in Hartford in 1831. Shortly 
after his return, in poor health, to Haverhill, he wrote to 
a friend that he had done with poetry and literature, and 
would now be a farmer. Yet he hankered for an election 
to Congress and might perhaps have secured it, through 
the confidence his neighbors had in his shrewdness and 
the esteem in which they held him because of his Boston 
and Hartford editorships, had he not definitely allied 
himself in 1833 with the abolitionist movement. Thus 
far, from his youthful prose and poetry, he had gained a 
reputation in literature second to none of his contempo- 
raries, in spite of which nothing which he early wrote is 
at the present time much read. Now began the second 
period of his life. 

As a reformer, from 1S33 to 1860, striving with Quaker 
intensity to uphold the principle of the equality of man, 
Whittier won the respect of the nation and the hootings 
of particular crowds. This was the time of his greatest 
effort in life ; in these years he accomplished what he con- 
sidered to be his most valuable service to his country. 
Not literature, but abolition, was his chief interest. Yet, 
since slavery is no more, we are now concerned rather with 
Whittier's literary life than with his life as a reformer 
and so must pass quickly over this second phase of his 
career. In June, 1833, influenced by the appeals of his 
friend Garrison to throw his influence into the cause of 
abolition, he published, at his own expense, a pamphlet 
entitled, ''Justice and Expediency: or, Slavery Con- 
sidered with a View to Its Rightful and Effectual Remedy, 
Abolition." This pamphlet illustrates Whittier's part in 
the abolition movement; he continued for more than 
twenty-five years to write essays and poems aiming to 
appeal to the reason and to bring about the abolition of 
slavery by public opinion as expressed by votes. He 
was one of the secretaries of the first national anti-slavery 
convention in Philadelphia and signed its declaration. In 



INTRODUCTION 23 

1835 he was a member of the Massachusetts legislature. 
In Concord, New Hampshire, he was mobbed in company 
with George Thompson, the English anti-slavery agitator. 
He kept Thompson, whose life was in danger, hidden 
for two weeks in the farmhouse. Soon after, during the 
rioting by a mob in Washington Street, Boston, Whittier 
was threatened with personal violence. A little later 
he was in New York for several months in the office of 
the American anti-slavery society, and almost became 
engaged to a young lady of Brooklyn. In 1838, when he 
was in Philadelphia editing the Pennsylvania Freeman, 
his office was sacked and burned by a mob, but he saved 
some of his belongings by disguising himself in a long 
white coat and a wig so that he could mingle with the mob 
without being known. He kept on editing the paper 
till his health failed. 

Then he took up his residence with his mother, aunt, 
and younger sister, Elizabeth, in Amesbury, eight miles 
from his birthplace, in a house which is now maintained 
as a memorial of the poet. Here his mother died in 1858. 
He edited at Lowell, Massachusetts, The Middlesex Stand- 
ard in 1844, and in 1847 became corresponding editor of 
The National Era, published at Washington. In 1849 he 
received five hundred dollars for the copyright of all his 
verse thus far published. Next year, he met James T. 
Fields, the friend of all the New England poets, and here- 
after his poems were published by Ticknor and Fields. 
In 1857 this firm brought out his collected poems. In 
spite of his numerous reform articles and poems, includ- 
ing the famous poem "Ichabod" and the volumes en- 
titled Voices of Freedom and Songs of Labor, in spite of 
his five prose volumes containing wonderfully keen essays 
analyzing and depicting early New England life and 
character, and in spite of a number of poems of national 
reputation, such as "The Barefoot Boy," "Skipper 
Ireson's Ride," and "Maud Muller, " written from 1833 



24 INTRODUCTION 

to 1860, he would hardly be assured a permanent place 
among the best American poets, if he had not in the 
maturity of his years returned to the themes of his boy- 
hood and written one imperishable poem on the New 
England life as he knew it when he was a boy. 

Since Whittier was a reformer, with his soul on fire for 
the abolition of slavery, it might be thought that a fitting 
end to the second period of his life would be the end of the 
war rather than the beginning. But no! As a Quaker, 
Whittier had a horror of war; he sympathized with the 
North, but he believed it would be better to let the 
South go rather than to fight. Thus he turned from his 
one absorbing great passion, his contention for freedom, to 
a tranquil life as a poet, a period of thirty-two years (from 
1860 to 1892), in no part of which because of ill health 
was he able to do a full day's work and in most of which 
he found it impossible to read or write for more than a 
half-hour at a time. In these years he grew steadily in 
the affections of the people. During the war his verses 
were cries of those who were bereaved and prayers for 
God to let the right be done. Some of his songs were 
sung by the northern soldiers, President Lincoln saying 
that he wanted the soldiers to hear such songs as Whit- 
tier's. His ballad of " Barbara Frietchie" and his "Laus 
Deo " are his best known poems produced in war times. 

After the war he wrote a number of religious poems 
which appear in collections of hymns sung by various 
denominations. "I have been a member of the Society 
of Friends by birthright and by a settled conviction of 
the truth of its principles and the importance of its testi- 
monies, while, at the same time, I have a kind feeling 
towards all who are seeking, in different ways from mine, 
to serve God and benefit their fellow-men." Thus Whittier 
wrote regarding his religious faith. It was this breadth 
of sympathy that made his religious songs acceptable to 
all true worshipers. 



INTRODUCTION 25 

Snow-Bound, which he says he wrote to beguile the 
weariness of a sick-room, at once became one of the " best 
sellers" of the day. From the time of its publication in 
1866, the surprising profits from its sale made Whittier 
a well-to-do man. Among the other poems of this period 
are "The Maids of Attitash," "Among the Hills," "Amy 
Wentworth," "My Playmate," "The Henchman," and 
"Sea Dream." But Snow-Bound is the poem on which 
Whittier 's fame as a poet most securely rests. 

After the death of his sister, in 1864, his brother's 
daughter, Elizabeth Whittier, kept house for him at 
Amesbury until her marriage in 1876 to S. T. Pickard, 
who became his biographer. Whittier continued to vote 
at Amesbury, but spent much of his time with his 
cousins, the Misses Johnson, at Oak Knoll, Dan vers, 
Massachusetts. At Amesbury, this kindly old bachelor, 
famous as he was, used to like to sit in the shop of the vil- 
lage tailor and talk with his neighbors. Occasionally he 
traveled to Boston to see his publishers and enjoy an 
evening with the Saturday Club, to which Longfellow 
also belonged. He spent his summers on Lake Winne- 
pesaukee or at the Isles of Shoals or at Amesbury. The 
life all the year was easier and quieter than in earlier 
days. He wrote when he felt inclined; he had an income 
more than sufficient for his simple needs. He had not 
many close friends, though numerous acquaintances, 
among the contemporary men of letters: Bayard Taylor, 
Holmes, Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, and Longfellow; 
the southern poet, Paul Hamilton Hayne, who was much 
attracted by his broad spirit ; the English writers, Dickens 
and Kingsley. Much of his time he spent in writing 
letters to gifted ladies — Lucy Larcom, Alice and Phoebe 
Cary, Celia Thaxter, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Sarah 
Orne Jewett, and Mrs. Fields. 

In 1877, when he was seventy years old, he was the 
guest of honor at a dinner given by the publishers of 



26 INTRODUCTION 

The Atlantic Monthly to distinguished contributors. Ten 
years later, on his eightieth birthday, he was congratu- 
lated at Oak Knoll by the governor of the state and a 
committee, for he was nearly the last of the great New 
England abolitionists and poets. In 1892 he died and was 
buried in the village cemetery at Amesbury, where the 
other members of his family had been buried before him. 
He was, as one of his biographers says, the last sur- 
vivor of the circle that gathered about the hearth in the 
snow-bound homestead. Such was his art in the unique 
and imperishable poem, Snow-Bound, that there is no 
family in the world whose members are so widely known 
among the people who speak the English tongue. 



CRITICAL COMMENTS 

POE, LONGFELLOW, AND WHITTIER 

It [the early part of the nineteenth century] was a time 
of emotionalism in verse. Emotionalism revealed itself 
in the love of the mediaeval and the oriental, — both 
realms in which conventionalism seemed absent; in the 
keener sentiments with which scenery was regarded, as 
if the power of sight had been stimulated and trained; 
in a fondness for the exquisitely beautiful, for the wild 
and terrible and extraordinary; in a desire to be thrilled 
by tales of madness and crime, to be torn with sympathy 
for the suffering; in religious fervor and in enthusiasm 
for humanitarian reform. This great quickening of the 
emotions made Scott and Byron and Shelley and Keats, 
and just as surely it declared itself [a little later] in Whit- 
tier and Longfellow and Lowell, in Hawthorne and Emer- 
son, brother romanticists all. 

Whittier's part in this movement was important. 
Bryant had already produced his noble early poems, 
inspired by the austere life and austere scenery surround- 
ing him in his childhood; Lowell was a' frivolous boy. 
Brainard, the man of greatest promise, was dead; Willis, 
although so popular, was of no real importance; and 
the leaders in the obscure forward march were Poe, 
Longfellow, and Whittier. To Poe, as a disciple of 
Coleridge, belonged the advance on the purely artistic 
side, the evolution of melody. Longfellow was an avowed 
scholar, though destined to come back to poetry with 
the intent of creating a literature on foreign models. 
27 



28 INTRODUCTION 

Whittier was the only man of genius who was attacking 
the problem directly. — George R. Carpenter, in John 
Greenleaf Whittier. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

On the roll of our literature Poe's name is inscribed 
with the few foremost, and in the world at large his genius 
is established as valid among all men. Much as he 
derived nurture from other sources, he was the son of 
Coleridge by the weird touch of his imagination, by the 
principles of his analytic criticism, and the speculative 
bent of his mind. An artist primarily, whose skill, helped 
by the finest sensitive and perceptive powers in himself, 
was developed by thought, patience, and endless self- 
correction into a subtle deftness of hand unsurpassed in 
its own work, he belonged to the men of culture instead 
of those of originally perfect power; but being gifted with 
the dreaming instinct, the myth-making faculty, the 
allegorizing power, and with no other poetic element of 
high genius, he exercised his art in a region of vague 
feeling, symbolic ideas, and fantastic imagery, and wrought 
his spell largely through sensuous effects of color, sound, 
and gloom, heightened by lurking but unshaped sugges- 
tions of mysterious meanings. Now and then gleams of 
light and stretches of lovely landscape shine out, but for 
the most part his mastery was over dismal, superstitious, 
and waste places. In imagination, as in action, his was 
an evil genius ; and in its realms of revery he dwelt alone. 
Except the wife who idolized him and the mother who 
cared for him, no one touched his heart in the years of 
his manhood, and at no time was love so strong in him as 
to rule his life. — George E. Woodberry, in The Life of 
Edgar Allan Poe. 

Without doubt, a distinctive melody is the element in 



INTRODUCTION 29 

Poe's verse that first and last has told on every class of 
readers, — a rhythmical effect which, be it of much or 
little worth, was its author's own; and to add even one 
constituent to the resources of an art is what few succeed 
in doing. He gained hints from other poets toward this 
contribution, but the timbre of his own voice was required 
for that peculiar music reinforced by the correlative re- 
frain and repetend; a melody, but a monody as well, 
limited almost to the vibratory recurrence of a single 
and typical emotion, yet no more palling the ear than 
palls the constant sound of a falling stream. It haunted 
rather than irked the senses, so that the poet was recog- 
nized by it, — as Melmoth the Wanderer by the one 
delicious strain heard whenever he approached. This 
brought him, on the other hand, the slight of many com- 
peers, and for this the wisest of them spoke of him as 
the "jingle-man." Yet there is more than this, one may 
well conceive, in his station as a poet. — E. C. Stedman 
and G. E. Woodberry, in The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. 

Poe has two of the prime qualities of genius : a faculty 
of vigorous, yet minute, analysis, and a wonderful fe- 
cundity of imagination. . . . Besides the merit of con- 
ception, Mr. Poe's writings have also that of form. His 
style is highly finished, graceful, and truly classical. It 
would be hard to find a living author who had displayed 
such varied powers. . . . The great masters of imagina- 
tion have seldom resorted to the vague and the unreal as 
sources of effect. They have not used dread and horror 
alone, but only in combination with other qualities, as 
means of subjugating the fancies of their readers. The 
loftiest muse has ever a household and fireside charm 
about her. Mr. Poe's secret lies mainly in the skill with 
which he has employed the strange fascination of mystery 
and terror. In this his success is so great and striking 
as to deserve the name of art, not artifice. We cannot 



30 INTRODUCTION 

call his materials the noblest or the purest, but we must 
concede to him the highest merit of construction. . . . 
On the whole, it may be considered certain that Mr. Poe 
has attained an individual eminence in our literature 
which he will keep. He has given proof of power and 
originality. He has done that which could only be done 
once with success or safety, and the imitation or repe- 
tition of which would produce weariness. — James Russell 
Lowell, in Graham's Magazine, February, 1845. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

His heart was pure, his purpose high, 

His thought serene, his patience vast; 
He put all strifes of passion by, 
And lived to God, from first to last. 

William Winter, in The N. Y. Tribune. 

It is no small thing for a singer to have a heart so pure 
and simple, an intellect so little isolated by years of 
foreign travel, of special study, of long association with 
men of distinction, that there is no barrier between him 
and the heart and intelligence of the people at large, of 
nineteen-twentieths of the race. Of American poets, 
only Whittier approached Longfellow in this respect of 
wide acceptation, and he was less national in his appeal; 
of modern British poets, only Scott. And Longfellow 
must be praised for the uses he made of this high oppor- 
tunity. He familiarizes his readers with the grace and 
flow of verse, with its melody and harmony. He intro- 
duces them to the beauty of olden times, of remote places, 
of foreign literature. He reveals to them the glory of 
the elementary virtues — faith and hope and love, 
optimism and aspiration. — George R. Carpenter, in 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Beacon Biographies). 



INTRODUCTION 31 

There was a notable sanity about all Longfellow's 
mode of life, and his attitude toward books and nature 
and men. It was the positive which attracted him, the 
achievement in literature, the large, seasonable gifts of 
the outer world, the men and women themselves who 
were behind the deeds and words which made them known. 
The books which he read, as noted in his journals, were the 
generous books ; he wanted the best w r ine of thought, and 
he avoided criticism. He basked in sunshine; he watched 
the sky, and was alive to the great sights and sounds and 
to all the tender influences of the seasons. In his inter- 
course with men, this sanity appeared in the power which 
he showed of preserving his own individuality in the midst 
of constant pressure from all sides; he gave of himself 
freely to his intimate friends, but he dwelt, nevertheless, 
in a charmed circle, beyond the lines of which men could 
not penetrate. Praise did not make him arrogant or 
vain; criticism, though it sometimes wounded him, did 
not turn him from his course. It is rare that one in our 
time has been the center of so much admiration, and still 
rarer that one has preserved in the midst of it all that 
integrity of nature which never abdicates. — Horace E. 
Scudder, in Men and Letters : Essays in Characterization 
and Criticism. 

In estimating the life-work of Longfellow as a poet, 
the personality and the product cannot be separated. 
The sweet and sympathetic and strong and self-reliant 
soul, so fully portrayed in the three- volume life by the 
poet's brother, ever animates the verse. Longfellow 
looked out upon life and sang his thoughts concerning 
its joys and its mysteries. His lyrics and idyls and dra- 
matic studies and reflective poems illuminate with catho- 
lic sympathy and quiet optimism the procession of human 
existence: childhood, youth with its loves and hopes, 
middle-life with its wasting and w T eariness and patiently 



32 INTRODUCTION 

continued work, death as the transition to another stage 
of progress and experience. His poems lack not thought, 
nor feeling, nor art, but well combine the three. What 
he misses in intellectual greatness he possesses in heart- 
fulness. He was the St. John of our American apostles 
of song. His word was spoken to those who work and 
win, struggle and lose, love and bury. He ranged from 
the American hearthstone to the castle-towers of the 
Rhine. He adorned the simplest thought with spoils of 
mediaeval and continental culture. An American, he 
was too wise to refuse to learn of Europe. A man of 
culture, he knew as well as Hawthorne, that mere selfish 
intellectual wisdom turns the heart to stone. A man 
of books, he carried his sympathies with him as he entered 
his library door. His reading was bent toward the better- 
ment and the utterance of his good impulses, and not to 
their crushing. A lifelong moralizer, he shunned cant 
as the twin-devil of hypocrisy. He made the most of 
himself, in life and letters. Neither Providence nor 
error cut short his earthly service to song. We dare 
not say that his service shall last 

"As long as the river flows, 
As long as the heart has passions, 
As long as life has woes"; 

but it will be until another shall sing the same songs 
better. — Charles F. Richardson, in American Literature: 
1607-1885. 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

He was not one of the royally endowed, far-shining, 
" myriad-minded " poets. He was rustic, provincial; a 
man of his place and time -in America. It is doubtful 
if European readers will ever find him richly suggestive, 
as they have found Emerson, Poe, and Whitman. But 



INTRODUCTION 33 

he had a tenacious hold upon certain realities: first, 
upon the soil of New England, of whose history and legend 
he became such a sympathetic interpreter; next, upon 
''the good old cause" of freedom, not only in his own 
country but in all places where the age-long and still 
but half- won battle was being waged; and finally, upon 
some permanent objects of human emotion, — the hill- 
top, shore and sky, the fireside, the troubled heart that 
seeks rest in God. Whittier 's poetry has revealed to 
countless readers the patient continuity of human life, its 
fundamental unity, and the ultimate peace that hushes its 
discords. The utter simplicity of his Quaker's creed has 
helped him to interpret the religious mood of a genera- 
tion which has grown impatient of formal doctrine. His 
hymns are sung by almost every body of Christians, 
the world over. It is unlikely that the plain old man 
who passed quietly away in a New Hampshire village on 
September 7, 1892, aged eighty-five, will ever be reckoned 
one of the world-poets. But he was, in the best sense of 
the word, a world's man in heart and in action, a sincere 
and noble soul who hated whatever was evil and helped 
to make the good prevail; and his verse, fiery and tender 
and unfeigned, will long be cherished by his countrymen. 
— Bliss Perry, in J. G. Whittier: A Sketch of His Life. 

Whittier as a poet is too well known to the American 
reader to call for any elaborate analysis of his style. As 
we turn over the collective edition of his poems, we are 
astonished to see the number of pieces that have be- 
come household words. Mogg Megone, Maud Muller, 
The Angels of Buena Vista, The Vaudois Teacher, My 
Soul and I, A Dream of Summer, Songs of Labor, The 
Barefoot Boy, Skipper Ireson's Ride, Barbara Frietchie 
— what a host of associations the very names evoke ! 
They and their twin brethren have long since passed 
into the hearts of the poet's countrymen. They are a 



34 INTRODUCTION 

part of ourselves. If we seek for the causes of this real 
popularity, we shall find one cause of it at least in Whit- 
tier's intense nationality. Bryant excepted, there is 
not an American poet who can, in this respect, be com- 
pared with Whittier. Setting aside a few, very few, 
songs on borrowed themes, we may say that everything 
that Whittier has written comes directly home to the 
American. What, for instance, can be more beautiful 
in its genial simplicity and also more characteristic than 
Snow-Bound? It may safely be ranked among the 
sweetest, most endearing idyls of the language. In it 
we see the fiery crusader of the Voices of Freedom soft- 
ened and mellowed into the retrospective artist. The 
period of fermentation has passed, the purification is 
complete. Harsh numbers are tuned to perfect accord; 
hatred of oppression has made way for broad humanity. 
If we read the Proem of 1847 side by side with Snow- 
Bound we shall have little difficulty in persuading our- 
selves that Whittier has not only nothing to fear from a 
comparison with melodious Spenser and Sidney, but has 
even surpassed them in artistic reality. — J. S. Hart. 

The American traveler in England who takes pains 
to inquire in bookstores as to the comparative standing 
of his country's poets among English readers, is likely 
to hear Longfellow ranked at the head, with Whittier 
a close second. In the same way, if he happens to attend 
English conventions and popular meetings, he will be 
pretty sure to hear these two authors quoted oftener 
than any other poets, British or American. This par- 
allelism in their fame makes it the more interesting to 
remember that Whittier was born within five miles of 
the old Longfellow homestead, where the grandfather 
of his brother poet was born. Always friends, though 
never intimate, they represented through life two quite 
different modes of rearing and education. Longfellow 



INTRODUCTION 35 

was the most widely traveled author of the Boston circle, 
Whittier the least so; Longfellow spoke a variety of 
languages, Whittier only his own; Longfellow had what- 
ever the American college of his time could give him, 
Whittier had none of it; Longfellow had the habits of a 
man of the world, Whittier those of a recluse; Longfellow 
touched reform but lightly, Whittier was essentially 
involved with it; Longfellow had children and grand- 
children, while Whittier led a single life. Yet in certain 
gifts, apart from poetic quality, they were alike; both 
being modest, serene, unselfish, brave, industrious, and 
generous. They either shared, or made up between them, 
the highest and most estimable qualities that mark poet 
or man. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in John Green- 
leaf Whittier (English Men of Letters Series). 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 

THE RAVEN 

Once upon * a midnight dreary, while I pondered, 
weak and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgot- 
ten lore — 

While I nodded, nearly napping, 2 suddenly there 
came a tapping, 

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my 
chamber door, 

"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my 
chamber door — 

Only this and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak 

December, 3 
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost 4 

upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had 

sought 5 to borrow 

From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for 

the lost Lenore — • 

37 



38 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels 
name Lenore 1 — 

Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each 
purple curtain 2 

Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never 
felt before; 

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I 
stood repeating, 

11 Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my cham- 
ber door — 

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my cham- 
ber door; 

This it is and nothing more." 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then 

no longer, 
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I 

implore; 
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you 

came rapping, 
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my 

chamber door, 
That I scarce was sure I heard you " — here I 

opened wide the door 

Darkness 3 there and nothing more. 



THE RAVEN 39 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there 

wondering, fearing, 
Doubting, dreaming dreams 1 no mortal ever dared 

to dream before; 
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness 2 

gave no token, 
And the only word there spoken was the whispered 

word " Lenore? " N 
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the 

word, "Lenore!" — ■ 

Merely this and nothing more. 

Back into the chamber turning, 3 all my soul within 

me burning, 
Soon again I heard 4 a tapping something louder 

than before. 
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my 

window lattice; 
Let me see, then, what thereat is, 5 and this mystery 

explore — 
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery 

explore; — 

Tis the wind and nothing more." 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a 
flirt and flutter, 



40 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

In there stepped a stately Raven * of the saintly 

clays of yore. 
Not the least obeisance made he, not a minute 

stopped or stayed he, 
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my 

chamber door — 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas 2 just above my 

chamber door — 

Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird 3 beguiling my sad fancy into 

smiling, 
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance 

it wore, 
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I 

said, "art sure no craven. 
Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven wandering from 

the Nightly shore — 
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's 

Plutonian shore!" 4 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 5 

Much I marveled this -ungainly fowl to hear 6 dis- 
course so plainly, 

Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy 
bore; 



THE RAVEN 41 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human 1 

being 
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his 

chamber door — 
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his 

chamber door — ■ 

With such name as " Nevermore." 

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, 2 

spoke only 
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he 

did outpour. 
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then 

he fluttered — 
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends 

have flown before — ■ 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have 

flown before." 

Then the bird said, 3 "Nevermore." 

Startled 4 at the stillness broken by reply so aptly 
spoken, 

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only 
stock and store, 

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerci- 
ful Disaster 



42 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Followed fast l and followed faster till his songs one 

burden bore — 
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden 

bore 

Of ' Never — nevermore.' " 

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul 2 into 

smiling, 
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird 

and bust and door; 
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to 

linking 
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird 

of yore — 
What this grim, ungainly, 3 ghastly, gaunt, and 

ominous bird of yore 

Meant in croaking "Nevermore." 

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable 

expressing 
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my 

bosom's core; 
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease 

reclining 
On the cushion's velvet 4 lining that the lamp-light 

gloated o'er, 



THE. RAVEN 43 

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light 
gloating o'er 

She shall press, ah, nevermore! 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed 

from an unseen censor 
Swung by Seraphim l whose footfalls tinkled on the 

tufted floor. 
" Wretch," 2 I cried, "thy God hath lent thee — by 

these angels he hath sent thee 
Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy memories 

of Lenore! 
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe 3 and forget this 

lost Lenore!" 

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! 4 — prophet still, 

if bird or devil ! — 
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed 

thee here ashore, 
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land 

enchanted — 
On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, 

I implore — 
Is there — is there balm in Gilead? 5 — tell me — • 

tell me, I implore!" 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 



44 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil — prophet still, 
if bird or devil ! — 

By that Heaven that bends above us — by that 
God/ we both adore — ■ 

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the dis- 
tant Aidenn, 2 

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels 
name Lenore — 

Clasp a rare and radiant 3 maiden whom the angels 
name Lenore." 

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" 

I shrieked, upstarting — 
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's 

Plutonian shore! 
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy 

soul hath spoken! 
Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the bust 

above my door! 
Take thy beak from out my heart, 4 and take thy 

form from off my door!" 

Quoth the Raven, " Nevermore." 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still 
is sitting 



THE RAVEN 45 

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber 
door; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's 1 
that is dreaming, 

And the lamp-light 2 o'er him streaming throws his 
shadow on the floor; 

And my soul from out that shadow that lies float- 
ing on the floor 

Shall be lifted — nevermore ! 




HENRY WADSWORTH LONUKKLLUW 




HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 
I 

MILES STANDISH 

In the Old Colony days, 1 in Plymouth the land 
of the Pilgrims, 
To and fro in a room of his simple and primitive 

dwelling, 
Clad in doublet and hose, and boots of Cordovan 2 

leather, 
Strode, with martial air, Miles Standish 3 the Puritan 
Captain. 

47 



48 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Buried in thought he seemed, with his hands behind 

him, and pausing 
Ever and anon to behold his glittering weapons of 

warfare, 
Hanging in shining array along the walls of his 

chamber, — 
Cutlass and corselet of steel, and his trusty sword of 

Damascus, 1 
Curved 2 at the point and inscribed with its mystical 

Arabic sentence, 
While underneath, in a corner, were fowling-piece, 

musket, and matchlock. 
Short of stature he was, but strongly built and ath- 
letic, 
Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles 

and sinews of iron; 
Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard 

was already 
Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes 

in November. 
Near him was seated John Alden, 3 his friend and 

household companion, 
Writing with diligent speed at a table of pine by 

the window; 
Fair-haired, azure-eyed, with delicate Saxon com- 
plexion, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 49 

Having the dew of his youth, and the beauty thereof, 

as the captives 
Whom Saint Gregory saw, and exclaimed, "Not 

Angles * but Angels." 
Youngest of all was he of the men who came in the 

Mayflower. 

Suddenly breaking the silence, the diligent scribe 2 

interrupting, 
Spake, in the pride of his heart, Miles Standish the 

Captain of Plymouth. 
" Look at these arms," he said, "the warlike weapons 

that hang here 
Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or 

inspection ! 
This is the sword of Damascus I fought with in 

Flanders; 3 this breastplate, — 
Well I remember the day! once saved my life in a 

skirmish; 
Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet 
Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish arca- 

bucero. 4 
Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones 

of Miles Standish 
Would at this moment be mold, in their grave in 

the Flemish morasses." 



50 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Thereupon answered John Alden, but looked not 

up from his writing: 
" Truly the breath 1 of the Lord hath slackened the 

speed of the bullet; 
He in his mercy preserved you, to be our shield and 

our weapon ! " 
Still the Captain continued, unheeding the words 

of the stripling: 
"See, how bright they are burnished, as if in an 

arsenal hanging; 
That is because I have done it myself, and not left 

it to others. 
Serve yourself, 2 would you be well served, is an 

excellent adage; 
So I take care of my arms, as you of your pens and 

your inkhorn. 
Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invin- 
cible army, 
Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest 3 

and his matchlock, 
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and 

pillage, 
And, like Caesar, I know the name of each of my 

soldiers ! " 
This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, 

as the sunbeams 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 51 

Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in 

a moment. 
Alden laughed l as he wrote, and still the Captain 

continued : 
"Look! you can see from this window my brazen 

howitzer planted 
High on the roof of the church, a preacher 2 who 

speaks to the purpose, 
Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresist- 
ible logic, 
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts 

of the heathen. 
Now we are ready, I think, for any assault of the 

Indians : 
Let them come if they like, and the sooner they try 

it the better, — 
Let them come if they like, be it sagamore, 3 sachem, 

or pow-wow, 
Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokama- 

hamon!" 

Long at the window he stood, and wistfully gazed 

on the landscape, 
Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath 

of the east wind, 
Forest 4 and meadow and hill, and the steel-blue 

rim of the ocean, 



52 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Lying silent and sad, in the afternoon shadows and 
sunshine. 

Over his countenance flitted a shadow like those on 
the landscape, 

Gloom intermingled with light; and his voice was 
subdued with emotion, 

Tenderness, pity, regret, as after a pause he pro- 
ceeded : 

"Yonder there, on the hill by the sea, lies buried 
Rose Stan dish; 

Beautiful rose of love, that bloomed for me by the 
wayside ! 

She was the first to die of all who came in the May- 
flower ! 

Green above her is growing the field of wheat we 
have sown there, 

Better to hide from the Indian scouts the graves of 
our people, 

Lest they should count them and see how many 
already have perished ! " 

Sadly his face he averted, and strode up and down, 
and was thoughtful. 

Fixed to the opposite wall was a shelf of books, 
and among them 
Prominent three, 1 distinguished alike for bulk and 
for binding; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 53 

BarrinVs Artillery Guide, 1 and the Commentaries 2 
of Caesar, 

Out of the Latin translated by Arthur Goldinge of 
London, 

And, as if guarded by these, between them was 
standing the Bible. 

Musing a moment before them, Miles Standish 
paused, as if doubtful 

Which of the three he should choose for his conso- 
lation and comfort, 

Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous cam- 
paigns of the Romans, 

Or the Artillery practice, designed for belligerent 
Christians. 

Finally down from its shelf he dragged the ponder- 
ous Roman, 

Seated himself at the window, and opened the book, 
and in silence 

Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where thumb- 
marks thick 3 on the margin, 

Like the trample of feet, proclaimed the battle was 
hottest. 

Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying 
pen of the stripling, 

Busily writing epistles important, to go by the 
Mayflower, 



54 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day at latest, 

God willing! 
Homeward bound l with the tidings of all that 

terrible winter, 
Letters written by Alden, and full of the name of 

Priscilla, 
Full of the name and the fame of the Puritan 

maiden Priscilla! 



II 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP 

Nothing was heard in the room but the hurrying 

pen of the stripling, 
Or an occasional sigh from the laboring heart of 

the Captain, 
Reading the marvelous words and achievements 

of Julius Caesar. 
After a while he exclaimed, as he smote with his 

hand, palm downwards, 
Heavily on the page: "A wonderful man was this 

Caesar ! 
You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but here is a 

fellow 
Who could both write and fight, and in both was 

equally skillful!" 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 55 

Straightway answered and spake John Alden, the 

comely, the youthful: 
"Yes, he was equally skilled, as you say, with his 

pen and his weapons. 
Somewhere have I read, but where I forget, he could 

dictate 
Seven letters at once, at the same time writing his 

memoirs." 
"Truly," continued the Captain, not heeding or 

hearing the other, 
" Truly a wonderful man was this Caius Julius 

Caesar ! 
' Better be first,' 1 he said, 'in a little Iberian vil- 
lage, 
Than be second in Rome,' and I think he was right 

when he said it. 
Twice was he married before he was twenty, and 

many times after; 
Battles five hundred he fought, and a thousand 

cities he conquered; 
He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself has 

recorded ; 
Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the orator 

Brutus ! 
Now, do you know what he did on a certain occa- 
sion in Flanders, 



56 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

When the rear guard of his army retreated, the 

front giving way too, 
And the immortal Twelfth Legion was crowded so 

closely together 
There was no room for their swords? Why, he 

seized a shield from a soldier, 
Put himself straight at the head of his troops, and 

commanded the captains, 
Calling on each by his name, to order forward the 

ensigns; 
Then to widen the ranks, and give more room for 

their weapons; 
So he won the day, the battle of something-or-other. 
That's what I always say; if you wish a thing to be 

well done, 
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to 

others!" 

All was silent again; the Captain continued his 

reading. 
Nothing was heard 1 in the room but the hurrying 

pen of the stripling 
Writing epistles important to go next day by the 

Mayflower, 
Filled with the name and the fame of the Puritan 

maiden Priscilla; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 57 

Every sentence began or closed with the name of 
Priscilla, 1 

Till the treacherous pen, to which he confided the 
secret, 

Strove to betray it by singing and shouting the 
name of Priscilla! 

Finally closing his book, with a bang of the ponder- 
ous cover, 

Sudden and loud as the sound of a soldier ground- 
ing his musket, 

Thus to the young man spake Miles Standish the 
Captain of Plymouth: 

"When you have finished your work, I have some- 
thing important to tell you. 

Be not, however, in haste; I can wait; I shall not be 
impatient ! " 

Straightway Alden replied, as he folded the last of 
his letters, 

Pushing his papers aside, and giving respectful 
attention : 

"Speak; for whenever you speak, I am always ready 
to listen, 

Always ready to hear whatever pertains to Miles 
Standish." 

Thereupon answered the Captain, embarrassed, and 
culling his phrases: 



58 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

" 'Tis not good for a man to be alone, say the Scrip- 
tures. 1 
This I have said before, and again and again I 

repeat it; 
Every hour in the day, I think it, and feel it, and 

say it. 
Since Rose Standish died, my life has been weary 

and dreary; 
Sick at heart have I been, beyond the healing of 

friendship. 
Oft in my lonely hours have I thought of the maiden 

Priscilla. 
She is alone in the world; 2 her father and mother 

and brother 
Died in the winter together; I saw her going and 

coming, 
Now to the grave of the dead, and now to the bed 

of the dying, 
Patient, courageous, and strong, and said to my- 
self, that if ever 
There were angels on earth, as there are angels in 

heaven, 
Two have I seen and known ; and the angel whose 

name is Priscilla 
Holds in my desolate life the place which the other 

abandoned. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 59 

Long have I cherished the thought, but never have 

dared to reveal it, 
Being a coward in this, though valiant enough for 

the most part. 
Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of 

Plymouth, 
Say that a blunt old Captain, a man not of words 

but of actions, 
Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of 

a soldier. 
Not in these words, you know, but this in short is 

my meaning; 
I am a maker of war, and not a maker of phrases. 
You, who are bred as a scholar, can say it in ele- 
gant language, 
Such as you read in your books of the pleadings 

and wooings of lovers, 
Such as you think best adapted to win the heart of 

a maiden." 

When he had spoken, John Alden, the fair-haired, 

taciturn 1 stripling, 
All aghast at his words, surprised, embarrassed, 

bewildered, 
Trying to mask his dismay by treating the subject 

with lightness, 



60 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Trying to smile, and yet feeling his heart stand 

still in his bosom, 
Just as a timepiece l stops in a house that is stricken 

by lightning, 
Thus made answer and spake, or rather stammered 

than answered: 
" Such a message as that, I am sure I should mangle 

and mar it; 
If you would have it well done, — I am only repeat- 
ing your maxim, 2 — 
You must do it yourself, you must not leave it to 

others!" 
But with the air of a man whom nothing can turn 

from his purpose, 
Gravely shaking his head, made answer the Captain 

of Plymouth: 
" Truly the maxim is good, and I do not mean to 

gainsay it; 
But we must use it discreetly, and not waste powder 

for nothing. 
Now, as I said before, I was never a maker of 

phrases. 
I can march up to a fortress and summon the place 

to surrender, 
But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I 

dare not. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 61 

I'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth 

of a cannon, 
But of a thundering 'No!' point-blank from the 

mouth of a woman, 
That, I confess, I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to 

confess it! 
So you must grant my request, for you are an ele- 
gant scholar, 
Having the graces of speech, and skill in the turning 

of phrases." 
Taking the hand of his friend, who still was reluc- 
tant and doubtful, 
Holding it long in his own, and pressing it kindly, 

he added: 
"Though I have spoken thus lightly, yet deep is 

the feeling that prompts me; 
Surely you cannot refuse what I ask in the name of 

our friendship!" 
Then made answer John Alden: "The name of 

friendship is sacred; 
What you demand in that name, I have not the 

power to deny you ! " 
So the strong will prevailed, subduing and molding 

the gentler, 
Friendship prevailed over love, and Alden went on 

his errand. 



62 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

III 

THE LOVER'S ERRAND 

So the strong will prevailed/ and Alden went on 
his errand, 

Out of the street of the village, and into the paths 
of the forest, 

Into the tranquil woods, where bluebirds and robins 
were building 

Towns in the populous trees, with hanging gardens 2 
of verdure, 

Peaceful, aerial cities of joy and affection and free- 
dom. 

All around him was calm, but within him commo- 
tion and conflict, 

Love contending with friendship, and self with 
each generous impulse. 

To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving 
and dashing, 

As in a foundering ship, with every roll of the vessel, 

Washes the bitter sea, the merciless surge of the 
ocean ! 

"Must I relinquish it all," he cried with a wild 
lamentation, — 

" Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, the 
illusion? 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 63 

Was it for this I have loved, and waited, and wor- 
shiped in silence? 
Was it for this I have followed the flying feet 1 and 

the shadow 
Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores of New 

England? 
Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its depths 

of corruption 
Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms of 

passion; 
Angels of light they seem, but are only delusions 

of Satan. 
All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it distinctly! 
This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon me in 

anger, 
For I have followed too much the heart's desires 

and devices, 
Worshiping Astaroth blindly, and impious idols of 

Baal. 2 
This is the cross I must bear; the sin and the swift 

retribution." 

So through the Plymouth woods John Alden 
went on his errand; 
Crossing the brook at the ford, where it brawled 
over pebble and shallow, 



64 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Gathering still, as he went, the mayflowers bloom- 
ing around him, 

Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonder- 
ful sweetness, 

Children * lost in the woods, and covered with 
leaves in their slumber. 

"Puritan flowers," he said, "and the type of Puri- 
tan maidens, 

Modest and simple and sweet, the very type of 
Priscilla! 

So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the may- 
flower of Plymouth, 

Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting gift will 
I take them; 

Breathing their silent farewells, as they fade and 
wither and perish, 

Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the 
giver." 

So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went 
on his errand; 

Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the 
ocean, 

Sailless, somber and cold with the comfortless 
breath of the east wind; 

Saw the new-built house, and people at work in a 
meadow; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 65 

Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice 
of Priscilla 

Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puri- 
tan anthem, 

Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the 
Psalmist, 

Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling and com- 
forting many. 

Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the form 
of the maiden 

Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool - like 
a snowdrift 

Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the 
ravenous spindle, 

While with her foot on the treadle she guided the 
wheel in its motion. 

Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm- 
book of Ainsworth, 

Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music 
together, 

Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall 
of a churchyard, 

Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the 
verses. 

Such was the book from whose pages she sang the 
old Puritan anthem, 2 ' 

She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the forest, 



66 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Making the humble house and the modest apparel 

of homespun 
Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with the wealth 

of her being! 
Over him rushed, like a wind that is keen and cold 

and relentless, 
Thoughts of what might have been, and the weight 

and woe of his errand; 
All the dreams that had faded, and all the hopes 

that had vanished, 
All his life * henceforth a dreary and tenantless 

mansion, 
Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrowful 

faces. 
Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely he said it, 
" Let not him that putteth his hand to the plow 2 

look backwards; 
Though the plowshare cut through the flowers of 

life to its fountains, 
Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead and the 

hearths of the living, 
It is the will of the Lord; and his mercy endureth 

forever ! " 3 

So he entered the house; and the hum of the 
wheel and the singing 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 67 

Suddenly ceased; for Priscilla, aroused by his step 

on the threshold, 
Rose as he entered, and gave him her hand, in 

signal of welcome, 
Saying, " I knew it was you, when I heard your 

step in the passage; 
For I was thinking of you, as I sat there singing 

and spinning." 
Awkward and dumb with delight, that a thought 

of him had been mingled 
Thus in the sacred psalm, that came from the heart 

of the maiden, 
Silent before her he stood, and gave her the flowers 

for an answer, 
Finding no words for his thought. He remem- 
bered that day in the winter, 
After the first great snow, when he broke a path 

from the village, 
Reeling and plunging along through the drifts that 

encumbered the doorway, 
Stamping the snow from his feet as he entered the 

house, and Priscilla 
Laughed at his snowy locks, and gave him a seat 

by the fireside, 
Grateful and pleased to know he had thought of 

her in the snow-storm. 



68 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Had he but spoken then perhaps not in vain had 

he spoken! 
Now it was all too late; the golden moment had 

vanished ! 
So he stood there abashed, and gave her the flowers 

for an answer. 

Then they sat down and talked of the birds and 

the beautiful springtime; 
Talked of their friends at home, and the Mayflower 

that sailed on the morrow. 
"I have been thinking all day," said gently the 

Puritan maiden, 
"Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, of the 

hedgerows of England, — 
They are in blossom now, and the country is all 

like a garden; 
Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the 

lark and the linnet, 
Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of 

neighbors 
Going about as of old, and stopping to gossip to- 
gether, 
And, at the end of the street, the village church, 

with the ivy 
Climbing the old gray tower, and the quiet graves 

in the churchvard. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 69 

Kind are the people I live with, and dear to me my 

religion ; 
Still my heart is so sad, that I wish myself back in 

Old England. 
You will say it is wrong, but I cannot help it: I 

almost 
Wish myself back in Old England,- 1 feel so lonely 

and wretched." 

Thereupon answered the youth : " Indeed I do 

not condemn you; 
Stouter hearts than a wonian's have quailed in 

this terrible winter. 
Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a stronger 

to lean on; 
So I have come to you now, with an offer and 

proffer of marriage 
Made by a good man and true, Miles Standish the 

Captain of Plymouth!" 

Thus he delivered his message, the dexterous 
writer of letters, — 

Did not embellish the theme, nor array it in beauti- 
ful phrases, 

But came straight to the point, and blurted it out 
like a schoolboy; 



70 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Even the Captain himself could hardly have said 

it more bluntly. 
Mute with amazement and sorrow, Priscilla the 

Puritan maiden 
Looked into Alden's face, her eyes dilated with 

wonder, 
Feeling his words like a blow, that stunned her and 

rendered her speechless; 
Till at length she exclaimed, interrupting the 

ominous silence: 
" If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager 

to wed me, 
Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble 

to woo me? 
If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not 

worth the winning!" 
Then John Alden began explaining and smoothing 

the matter, 
Making it worse as he went, by saying the Captain 

was busy, — 
Had no time for such things; — such things! the 

words grating harshly 
Fell on the ear of Priscilla; and swift as a flash she 

made answer: 
" Has he no time for such things, as you call it, 

before he is married, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 71 

Would he be likely to find it, or make it, after the 

wedding? 
That is the way with you men; you don't understand 

us, you cannot. 
When you have made up your minds, after think- 
ing of this one and that one, 
Choosing, selecting, rejecting, comparing one with 

another, 
Then you make known your desire, with abrupt 

and sudden avowal, 
And are offended and hurt, and indignant perhaps, 

that a woman 
Does not respond at once to a love that she never 

suspected, 
Does not attain at a bound to the height to which 

you have been climbing. 
This is not right nor just; for surely a woman's 

affection 
Is not a thing to be asked for, and had for only the 

asking. 
When one is truly in love, one not only says it, 

but shows it. 
Had he but waited a while, had he only showed 

that he loved me, 
Even this Captain of yours — who knows? — at 

last might have won me, 



72 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 

Old and rough as he is; but now it never can happen." 

Still John Alden went on, unheeding the words 
of Priscilla, 

Urging the suit of his friend, explaining, persuad- 
ing, expanding; 

Spoke of his courage and skill, and of all his battles 
in Flanders, 

How with the people of God he had chosen to suffer 
affliction, 

How, in return for his zeal, they had made him 
Captain of Plymouth; 

He was a gentleman born, could trace his pedigree 
plainly 

Back to Hugh Standish 1 of Duxbury Hall, in Lan- 
cashire, England, 

Who was the son of Ralph, and the grandson of 
Thurston de Standish; 

Heir unto vast estates, of which he was basely 
defrauded, 

Still bore the family arms, 2 and had for his crest a 
cock argent 

Combed and wattled gules, and all the rest of the 
blazon. 

He was a man of honor, of noble and generous 
nature; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 73 

Though he was rough, he was kindly; she knew 

how during the winter 
He had attended the sick, with a hand as gentle 

as woman's; 
Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny it, 

and headstrong, 
Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and placable 

always, 
Not to be laughed at and scorned, because he was 

little of stature; 
For he was great of heart, magnanimous, courtly, 

courageous ; 
Any woman in Plymouth, nay, any woman in 

England, 
Might be happy and proud to be called the wife of 

Miles Standish! 

But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple 
and eloquent language, 

Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his 
rival, 

Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over- 
running with laughter, 

Said, in a tremulous voice, " Why don't you speak 
for yourself, John?'' l 



74 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

IV 

JOHN ALDEN 

Into the open air John Alden, 1 perplexed and be- 
wildered, 

Rushed like a man insane, and wandered alone by 
the seaside; 

Paced up and down the sands, and bared his head 
to the east wind, 

Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and fever 
within him. 

Slowly, as out of the heavens, with apocalyptical 
splendors, 2 

Sank the City of God, in the vision of John the 
Apostle; 

So, with its cloudy walls of chrysolite, jasper, and 
sapphire, 

Sank the broad red sun, and over its turrets up- 
lifted 

Glimmered the golden reed of the angel who meas- 
ured the city. 

"Welcome, O wind of the East!" he exclaimed 
in his wild exultation, 
"Welcome, O wind of the East, from the caves of 
the misty Atlantic! 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 75 

Blowing o'er fields of dulse, 1 and measureless 

meadows of seagrass, 
Blowing o'er rocky wastes, and the grottoes and 

gardens of ocean ! 
Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning forehead, 

and wrap me 
Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the fever 

within me!" 

Like an awakened conscience, the sea was moan- 
ing and tossing, 

Beating remorseful and loud the mutable sands of 
the seashore. 

Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of 
passions contending; 

Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship 
wounded and bleeding, 

Passionate cries of desire, and importunate plead- 
ings of duty! 

" Is it my fault," he said, "that the maiden has 
chosen between us? 

Is it my fault that he failed, — my fault that I am 
the victor? " 

Then within him there thundered a voice, like the 
voice of the Prophet: 

"It hath displeased the Lord!" — and he thought 
of David's transgression, 2 



76 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Bathsheba's beautiful face, and his friend in the 
front of the battle! 

Shame and confusion of guilt, and abasement and 
self-condemnation, 

Overwhelmed him at once; and he cried in the 
deepest contrition: 

"It hath displeased the Lord! It is the tempta- 
tion of Satan ! " 

Then, uplifting his head, he looked at the sea, 

and beheld there 
Dimly the shadowy form of the Mayflower riding 

at anchor, 
Rocked on the rising tide, and ready to sail on the 

morrow; 
Heard the voices of men through the mist, the rattle 

of cordage 
Thrown on the deck, the shouts of the mate, and 

the sailors' "Aye, aye, sir!" 
Clear and distinct, but not loud, in the dripping 

air of the twilight- 
Still for a moment he stood, and listened, and 

stared at the vessel, 
Then went hurriedly on, as one who, seeing a phan- 
tom, 
Stops, then quickens his pace, and follows the 

beckoning shadow. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 77 

"Yes, it is plain to me now/' he murmured; "the 

hand of the Lord is 
Leading me out of the land of darkness, the bond- 
age of error, 
Through the sea, that shall lift the walls of its 

waters * around me, 
Hiding me, cutting me off, from the cruel thoughts 

that pursue me. 
Back will I go o'er the ocean, this dreary land will 

abandon, 
Her 2 whom I may not love, and him whom my heart 

has offended. 
Better to be in my grave in the green old church- 
yard in England, 
Close by my mother's side, and among the dust 

of my kindred; 
Better be dead and forgotten, than living in shame 

and dishonor! 
Sacred and safe and unseen, in the dark of the 

narrow chamber 
With me my secret shall lie, like a buried jewel 

that glimmers 
Bright on the hand that is dust, in the chambers 

of silence and darkness, — 
Yes, as the marriage ring of the great espousal 

hereafter!" 



78 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Thus as he spake, he turned, in the strength of 
his strong resolution, 

Leaving behind him the shore, and hurried along 
in the twilight, 

Through the congenial gloom of the forest silent 
and somber, 

Till he beheld the lights on the seven houses l of 
Plymouth, 

Shining like seven stars in the dusk and mist of 
the evening. 

Soon he entered his door, and found the redoubt- 
able Captain 

Sitting alone, and absorbed in the martial pages 
of Csesar, 

Fighting some great campaign in Hainault or Bra- 
bant 2 or Flanders. 

" Long have you been on your errand," he said with 
a cheery demeanor, 

Even as one who is waiting an answer, and fears 
not the issue. 

" Not far off is the house, although the woods are 
between us; 

But you have lingered so long, that while you 
were going and coming 

I have fought ten battles and sacked and demol- 
ished a city. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 79 

Come, sit down, and in order relate to me all that 
has happened." 

Then John Alden spake, and related the won- 
drous adventure 

From beginning to end, minutely, just as it happened ; 

How he had seen Priscilla, and how he had sped l 
in his courtship, 

Only smoothing a little, and softening down her 
refusal, 

But when he came at length to the words Priscilla 
had spoken, 

Words so tender and cruel: "Why don't you speak 
for yourself, John?" 

Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped 
on the floor, till his armor 

Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound 
of sinister omen. 

All his pent-up wrath burst forth in a sudden ex- 
plosion, 

E'en as a hand-grenade, that scatters destruction 
around it. 

Wildly he shouted, and loud: "John Alden! you 
have betrayed me ! 

Me, Miles Standish, your friend! have supplanted, 
defrauded, betrayed me! 



80 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

One of my ancestors ran his sword through the 

heart of Wat Tyler; 1 
Who shall prevent me from running my own through 

the heart of a traitor? 
Yours is the greater treason, for yours is a treason 

to friendship! 
You, who lived under my roof, whom I cherished 

and loved as a brother; 
You, who have fed at my board, and drunk at my 

cup, to whose keeping 
I have intrusted my honor, my thoughts the most 

sacred and secret, — 
You too, Brutus ! 2 ah, woe to the name of friendship 

hereafter ! 
Brutus was Caesar's friend, and you were mine, but 

henceforward 
Let there be nothing between us save war, and im- 
placable hatred ! " 

So spake the Captain of Plymouth, and strode 

about in the chamber, 
Chafing and choking with rage; like cords were the 

veins on his temples. 
But in the midst of his anger a man appeared at 

the doorway, 
Bringing in uttermost haste a message of urgent 

importance, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 81 

Rumors of danger and war and hostile incursions 

of Indians! 
Straightway the Captain paused, and, without 

further question or parley, 
Took from the nail on the wall his sword with its 

scabbard of iron, 
Buckled the belt round his waist, and, frowning 

fiercely, departed. 
Alden was left alone. 1 He heard the clank of the 

scabbard 
Growing fainter and fainter, and dying away in 

the distance. 
Then he arose from his seat, and looked forth into 

the darkness, 
Felt the cool air blow on his cheek, that was hot 

with the insult, 
Lifted his eyes to the heavens, and, folding his 

hands as in childhood, 
Prayed in the silence of night to the Father who 

seeth in secret. 2 

Meanwhile the choleric Captain strode wrathful 
away to the council, 

Found it already assembled, impatiently waiting 
his coming; 

Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in de- 
portment, 



82 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Only one of them old, the hill 1 that was nearest 

to heaven, 
Covered with snow, but erect, the excellent Elder 

of Plymouth. 
God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat 

for this planting, 
Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a 

nation; 
So say the chronicles old, 2 and such is the faith of 

the people! 
Near them was standing an Indian, in attitude 

stern and defiant, 
Naked down to the waist, and grim and ferocious 

in aspect; 
While on the table before them was lying unopened 

a Bible, 
Ponderous, bound in leather, brass-studded, printed 

in Holland, 
And beside it outstretched the skin 3 of a rattle- 
snake glittered, 
Filled, like a quiver, with arrows: a signal and 

challenge of warfare, 
Brought by the Indian, and speaking with arrowy 

tongues of defiance. 
This Miles Standish beheld, as he entered, and 

heard them debating 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 83 

What were an answer befitting the hostile message 

and menace, 
Talking of this and of that, contriving, suggesting, 

objecting; 
One voice only for peace, and that the voice of the 

Elder, 1 
Judging it wise and well that some at least were 

converted, 
Rather than any were slain, for this was but Chris- 
tian behavior! 
Then out spake Miles Standish, the stalwart Cap- 
tain of Plymouth, 
Muttering deep in his throat, for his voice was husky 

with anger, 
" What ! do you mean to make war with milk and 

the water of roses? 
Is it to shoot reel squirrels you have your howitzer 

planted 
There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot 

red devils? 
Truly the only tongue that is understood by a 

savage 
Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the 

mouth of the cannon ! " 
Thereupon answered and said the excellent Elder 

of Plymouth, 



84 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this irreverent 

language : 
"Not so thought Saint Paul, nor yet the other 

Apostles; 
Not from the cannon's mouth were the tongues of 

fire they spake with ! " 
But unheeded fell this mild rebuke on the Captain, 
Who had advanced to the table, and thus con- 
tinued discoursing: 
"Leave this matter to me, for to me by right it 

pertaineth. 
War is a terrible trade; but in the cause that is 

righteous, 
Sweet is the smell of powder ; and thus I answer the 

challenge ! " 

Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, 

contemptuous gesture, 
Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder 

and bullets 
Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the 

savage, 
Saying, in thundering tones: "Here, take it! this 

is your answer!" 
Silently out of the room then glided the glistening 

savage, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 85 

Bearing the serpent's skin, and seeming himself 

like a serpent, 
Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the depths 

of the forest. 



THE SAILING OF THE MAYFLOWER 

Just in the gray of the dawn, as the mists uprose 
from the meadows, 

There was a stir and a sound 1 in the slumbering 
village of Plymouth; 

Clanging and clicking of arms, and the order imper- 
ative, "Forward!" 

Given in tone suppressed, a tramp of feet, and then 
silence. 

Figures ten, in the mist, marched slowly out of the 
village. 

Standish the stalwart it was, with eight of his valor- 
ous army, 

Led by their Indian guide, by Hobomok, friend of 
the white men, 

Northward marching to quell the sudden revolt of 
the savage. 

Giants they seemed in the mist, or the mighty men 
of King David; 2 



86 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Giants in heart they were, who believed in God 

and the Bible, — 
Aye, who believed in the smiting of Midianites and 

Philistines. 
Over them gleamed far off the crimson banners of 

morning; 
Under them loud on the sands, the serried * billows, 

advancing, 
Fired along the line, and in regular order retreated. 

Many a mile had they marched, when at length 

the village of Plymouth 
Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on its mani- 
fold labors. 
Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the smoke 

from the chimneys 
Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed steadily 

eastward ; 
Men came forth from the doors, and paused and 

talked of the weather, 
Said that the wind had changed, and was blowing 

fair for the Mayflower; 
Talked of their Captain's departure, and all the 

dangers that menaced, 
He being gone, the town, and what should be done 

in his absence. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 87 

Merrily sang the birds, and the tender voices of 

women 
Consecrated with hymns the common cares of the 

household. 
Out of the sea rose the sun, and the billows re- 
joiced at his coming; 
Beautiful were his feet l on the purple tops of the 

mountains; 
Beautiful on the sails of the Mayflower riding at 

anchor, 
Battered and blackened and worn by all the storms 

of the winter. 
Loosely against her masts was hanging and flap- 
ping her canvas, 
Rent -by so many gales, and patched by the hands 

of the sailors. 
Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over the 

ocean, 
Darted a puff of smoke, and floated seaward; anon 

rang 
Loud over field and forest the cannon's roar, and 

the echoes 
Heard and repeated the sound, the signal-gun of 

departure ! 
Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of 

the people! 



88 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was read 

from the Bible, 
Meekly the prayer was begun, but ended in fervent 

entreaty ! 
Then from their houses in haste came forth the 

Pilgrims of Plymouth, 
Men and women and children, all hurrying down 

to the seashore, 
Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to the 

Mayflower, 
Homeward bound o'er the sea, and leaving them 

here in the desert. 1 

Foremost among them was Alden. All night he 

had lain without slumber, 
Turning and tossing about in the heat and unrest 

of his fever. 
He had beheld Miles Standish, who came back late 

from the council, 
Stalking into the room, and heard him mutter and 

murmur, 
Sometimes it seemed a prayer, and sometimes it 

sounded like swearing. 
Once he had come to the bed, and stood there a 

moment in silence; 
Then he had turned away, and said: "I will not 

awake him; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 89 

Let him sleep on, it is best; for what is the use of 

more talking!" 
Then he extinguished the light, and threw himself 

down on his pallet, 
Dressed as he was, and ready to start at the break 

of the morning, — 
Covered himself with the cloak he had worn in his 

campaigns in Flanders, — 
Slept as a soldier sleeps in his bivouac, ready for 

action. 
But with the dawn he arose; in the twilight Alden 

beheld him 
Put on his corselet of steel, and all the rest of his 

armor, 
Buckle about his waist his trusty blade of Da- 
mascus, 
Take from the corner his musket, and so stride out 

of the chamber. 
Often the heart of the youth had burned and yearned 

to embrace him, 
Often his lips had essayed to speak, imploring for 

pardon ; 
All the old friendship came back with its tender and 

grateful emotions; 
But his pride overmastered the nobler nature within 

him. — 



90 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Pride, and the sense of his wrong, and the burning 

fire of the insult. 
So he beheld his friend departing in anger, but 

spake not, 
Saw him go forth to danger, perhaps to death, and 

he spake 1 not ! 
Then he arose from his bed, and heard what the 

people were saying, 
Joined in the talk at the door, with Stephen and 

Richard and Gilbert, 2 
Joined in the morning prayer, and in the reading 

of Scripture, 
And, with the others, in haste went hurrying down 

to the seashore, 
Down to the Plymouth Rock, 3 that had been to 

their feet as a doorstep 
Into a world unknown, — the corner stone of a nation ! 

There with his boat was the Master, 4 already a 

little impatient 
Lest he should lose the tide, or the wind might 

shift to the eastward, 
Square-built, hearty, and strong, with an odor of 

ocean about him, 
Speaking with this one and that, and cramming 

letters and parcels 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 91 

Into his pockets capacious, and messages mingled 

together 
Into his narrow brain, till at last he was wholly 

bewildered. 
Nearer the boat stood Alden, with one foot placed 

on the gunwale, 1 
One still firm on the rock, and talking at times with 

the sailors, 
Seated erect on the thwarts, all ready and eager for 

starting. 
He too was eager to go, and thus put an end to his 

anguish, 
Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter than keel 

is or canvas, 
Thinking to drown in the sea the ghost that would 

rise and pursue him. 
But as he gazed on the crowd, he beheld the form 

of Priscilla 
Standing dejected among them, unconscious of all 

that was passing. 
Fixed were her eyes upon his, as if she divined his 

intention, 
Fixed with a look so sad, so reproachful, imploring, 

and patient, 
That with a sudden revulsion his heart recoiled 

from its purpose, 



92 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

As from the verge of a crag, where one step more is 

destruction. 
Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, mys- 
terious instincts! 
Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are 

moments, 
Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall 

adamantine ! 
" Here I remain! " 1 he exclaimed, as he looked at the 

heavens above him, 
Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the 

mist and the madness, 
Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was stagger- 
ing headlong. 
"Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in the ether 

above me, 
Seems like a hand that is pointing and beckoning 

over the ocean. 
There is another hand, that is not so spectral and 

ghost-like, 
Holding me, drawing me back, and clasping mine 

for protection. 
Float, O hand of cloud, and vanish away in the 

ether ! 
Roll thyself up like a fist, to threaten and daunt 

me; I heed not 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 93 

Either your warning or menace, or any omen of 

evil! 
There is no land so sacred, no air so pure and so 

wholesome, 
As is the air she breathes, and the soil that is pressed 

by her footsteps. 
Here for her sake will I stay, and like an invisible 

presence 
Hover around her forever, protecting, supporting 

her weakness; 
Yes! as my foot was the first that stepped on this 

rock at the landing, 
So, with the blessing of God, shall it be the last at 

the leaving!" 

Meanwhile the Master alert, but with dignified 
air and important, 

Scanning with watchful eye the tide and the wind 
and the weather, 

Walked about on the sands, and the people crowded 
around him 

Saying a few last words, and enforcing his careful 
remembrance. 

Then, taking ea.ch by the hand, as if he were grasp- 
ing a tiller, 

Into the boat he sprang, and in haste shoved off 
to his vessel. 



94 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Glad in his heart to get rid of all this worry and 

flurry, 
Glad to be gone from a land of sand and sickness 

and sorrow, 
Short allowance of victual, and plenty of nothing 

but Gospel! 
Lost in the sound of oars was the last farewell of 

the Pilgrims. 
O strong hearts and true! not one went back in the 

Mayflower! 
No, not one looked back, who had set his hand 1 to 

this plowing! 

Soon were heard on board the shouts and songs 

of the sailors 
Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting the pon- 
derous anchor. 
Then the yards were braced, and all sails set to the 

west wind, 
Blowing steady and strong; and the Mayflower 

sailed from the harbor, 
Rounded the point of the Gurnet, 2 and leaving far 

to the southward 
Island and cape of sand, and the Field of the First 

Encounter, 3 
Took the wind on her quarter, and stood for the 

open Atlantic, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 95 

Borne on the send of the sea, and the swelling 
hearts of the Pilgrims. 

Long in silence they watched the receding sail 

of the vessel, 
Much endeared to them all, as something living 

and human; 
Then,, as if filled with the spirit, and wrapt in a 

vision prophetic, 
Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder of 

Plymouth 
Said, " Let us pray!" and they prayed, and thanked 

the Lord and took courage. 1 
Mournfully sobbed the waves at the base of the 

rock, and above them 
Bowed and whispered the wheat on the hill of 

death, and their kindred 
Seemed to awake in their graves, and to join in the 

prayer that they uttered. 
Sun-illumined and white, on the eastern verge of 

the ocean 
Gleamed the departing sail, like a marble slab in a 

graveyard; 
Buried beneath it lay forever all hope of escaping. 
Lo! as they turned to depart, they saw the form of 

an Indian, 



96 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Watching them from the hill; but while they spake 
with each other, 

Pointing with outstretched hands, and saying, 
"Look!" he had vanished. 

So they returned to their homes; but Alden lin- 
gered a little, 

Musing alone on the shore, and watching the wash 
of the billows 

Round the base of the rock, and the sparkle and 
flash of the sunshine, 

Like the spirit of God, 1 moving visibly over the 
waters. 



VI 



PRISCILLA 

Thus for a while he stood, and mused by the 

shore of the ocean, 
Thinking of many things, and most of all of Pris- 

cilla; 
And as if thought had the power to draw to itself, 

like the loadstone, 
Whatsoever it touches, by subtle laws of its 

nature, 
Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was standing 

beside him. 





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98 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

"Are you so much offended, you will not speak 

to me?" said she. 
" Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you 

were pleading 
Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive 

and wayward, 
Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps 

of decorum? 
Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, 

for saying 
What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never 

unsay it; 
For there are moments in life, when the heart is so 

full of emotion, 
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths 

like a pebble 
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its 

secret, 
Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gath- 
ered together. 
Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak 

of Miles Standish, 
Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects 

into virtues, 
Praising his courage and strength, and even his 

fighting in Flanders, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 99 

As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of a 

woman, 
Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exalting 

your hero. 
Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse. 
You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the 

friendship between us, 
Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily 

broken ! " 
Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the 

friend of Miles Standish: 
" I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was 

angry, 
Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in 

my keeping." 
" No! ,n interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt 

and decisive; 
"No; you were angry with me, for speaking so 

frankly and freely. 
It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a 

woman 
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost 

that is speechless, 
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its 

silence. 
Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women 



100 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean 

rivers 
Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, 

unseen, and unfruitful, 
Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and 

profitless murmurs." 
Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, 

the lover of women : 
"Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem 

to me always 
More like the beautiful rivers 1 that watered the 

garden of Eden, 
More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of 

Havilah flowing, 
Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet 

of the garden!" 
"Ah, by these words, I can see," again interrupted 

the maiden, 
"How very little you prize me, or care for what I 

am saying. 
When from the depths of my heart, in pain and 

with secret misgiving, 
Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only 

and kindness, 
Straightway you take up my words, that are plain 

and direct and in earnest, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 101 

Turn them away from their meaning, and answer 
with flattering phrases. 

This is not right, is not just, is not true to the best 
that is in you; 

For I know and esteem you, and feel that your 
nature is noble, 

Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal level. 

Therefore I value your friendship, and feel it per- 
haps the more keenly 

If you say aught that implies I am only as one 
among many, 

If you make use of those common and compli- 
mentary phrases 

Most men think so fine, in dealing and speaking 
with women, 

But which women reject as insipid, if not as in- 
sulting." 

Mute and amazed was Alden; and listened and 

looked at Priscilla, 
Thinking he never had seen her more fair, more 

divine in her beauty. 
He who but yesterday pleaded so glibly the cause 

of another, 
Stood there embarrassed and silent, and seeking in 

vain for an answer. 



102 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

So the maiden went on, and little divined or imag- 
ined 
What was at work in his heart, that made him so 

awkward and speechless. 
" Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we 

think, and in all things 
Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred pro- 
fessions of friendship. 
It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed to 

declare it: 
I have liked to be with you, to see you, to speak 

with you always. 
So I was hurt at your words, and a little affronted 

to hear you 
Urge me to marry your friend, though he were the 

Captain Miles Standish. 
For I must tell you the truth: much more to me is 

your friendship 
Than all the love he could give, were he twice the 

hero you think him." 
Then she extended her hand, and jUden, who 

eagerly grasped it, 
Felt all the wounds in his heart, that were aching 

and bleeding so sorely, 
Healed by the touch of that hand, and he said, 

with a voice full of feeling: 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 103 

" Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer 

you friendship 
Let me be e'er the first, the truest, the nearest and 

dearest ! " 

Casting a farewell look at the glimmering sail of 
the Mayflower 

Distant, but still in sight, and sinking below the 
horizon, 

Homeward together they walked, with a strange, 
indefinite feeling, 

That all the rest had departed and left them alone 
in the desert. 

But, as they went through the fields in the blessing 
and smile of the sunshine, 

Lighter grew their hearts, and Priscilla said very 
archly : 

" Now that our terrible Captain has gone in pursuit 
of the Indians, 

Where he is happier far than he would be command- 
ing a household, 

You may speak boldly, and tell me of all that 
happened between you, 

When you returned last night, and said how un- 
grateful you found me." 

Thereupon answered John Alden, and told her the 
whole of the story, — 



104 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Told her his own despair, and the direful wrath 1 of 

Miles Standish. 
Whereat 'the maiden smiled, and said between 

laughing and earnest, 
" He is a little chimney, and heated hot in a mo- 
ment!" 
But as he gently rebuked her, and told her how 

much he had suffered, — 
How he had even determined to sail that day in the 

Mayflower, 
And remained for her sake, on hearing the dangers 

that threatened, — 
All her manner was changed, 2 and she said with a 

faltering accent, 
"Truly I thank you for this: how good you have 

been to me always ! " 

Thus, as a pilgrim devout, who toward Jerusalem 

journeys, 
Taking three steps in advance, and one reluctantly 

backward, 
Urged by importunate zeal, and withheld by pangs 

of contrition; 
Slowly but steadily onward, receding yet ever 

advancing, 
Journeyed this Puritan youth to the Holy Land 3 

of his longings, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 105 

Urged by the fervor of love, and withheld by re- 
morseful misgivings. 



VII 



THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH 

Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish was 

marching steadily northward, 
Winding through forest and swamp, and along the 

trend of the seashore, 
All clay long, with hardly a halt, the fire of his 

anger 
Burning and crackling within, and the sulphurous 

odor of powder 
Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all the 

scents of the forest. 
Silent and moody he went, and much he revolved 

his discomfort; 
He who was used to success, and to easy victories 

always, 
Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed to scorn 

by a maiden, 
Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the friend 

whom most he had trusted! 
Ah! 'twas too much to be borne, and he fretted and 

chafed in his armor! 



106 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

"I alone am to blame," he muttered, "for mine 

was the folly. 
What has a rough old soldier, grown grim and gray 

in the harness, 
Used to the camp and its ways, to do with the 

wooing of maidens? 
'Twas but a dream, — let it pass, — let it vanish 

like so many others! 
What I thought was a flower, is only a weed, and is 

worthless; 
Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw it away, 

and henceforward 
Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and wooer of 

dangers!" 
Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry defeat and 

discomfort, 
While he was marching by day or lying at night in 

the forest, 
Looking up at the trees and the constellations 

beyond them. 

After a three days' march he came to an Indian 

encampment 
Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea 

and the forest; 
Women at work by the tents, and the warriors, 

horrid with warpaint, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 107 

Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking 

together; 
Who. when they saw from afar the sudden approach 

of the white men, 
Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and saber 

and musket, 
Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from 

among them advancing, 
Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs 

as a present; 
Friendship was 1 in their looks, but in their hearts 

there was hatred. 
Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers, gigan- 
tic in stature, 
Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, 2 king 

of Bashan; 
One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called 

Wattawamat. 
Round their necks were suspended their knives in 

scabbards of wampum, 3 
Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as sharp 

as a needle. 
Other arms had they none, for they were cunning 

and crafty. 
"Welcome, English!" they said, — these words 

they had learned from the traders 



108 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Touching at times on the coast, to barter and 

chaffer for peltries. 
Then in their native tongue they began to parley 

with Standish, 
Through his guide and interpreter, Hobomok, friend 

of the white man, 
Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly for 

muskets and powder, 
Kept by the white man, they said, concealed, with 

the plague, in his cellars, 
Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the 

red man! 
But when Standish refused, and said he would give 

them the Bible, 
Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast 

and to bluster. 
Then Wattawamat 1 advanced with a stride in 

front of the other, 
And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake 

to the Captain: 
" Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of 

the Captain, 
Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave 

Wattawamat 
Is not afraid at the sight. He was not born of a 

woman, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 109 

But on a mountain, at night, from an oak-tree riven 

by lightning, 
Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his weapons 

about him, 
Shouting, i Who is there here to fight with the 

brave Wattawamat?'" 
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the 

blade on his left hand, 
Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the 

handle, 
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister 

meaning: 
"I have another at home, with the face of a man 

on the handle; 
By and by they shall marry; and there will be 

plenty of children!" 

Then stood Pecksuot forth, self-vaunting, in- 
sulting Miles Standish; 

While with his fingers he patted the knife that hung 
at his bosom, 

Drawing it half from its sheath, and plunging it 
back, as he muttered, 

"By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha! but 
shall speak not! 

This is the mighty Captain the white men have sent 
to destroy us! 



110 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

He is a little man; let him go and work with the 
women!" 

Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and 

figures of Indians 
Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in 

the forest, 
Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their 

bow-strings, 
Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of 

their ambush. 
But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated 

them smoothly; 
So the old chronicles say, that were writ in the days 

of the fathers. 
But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the 

taunt, and the insult, 
All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of 

Thurston de Standish, 
Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the 

veins of his temples. 
Headlong he leaped on the boaster, 1 and, snatching 

his knife from its scabbard, 
Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, 

the savage 
Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierce- 
ness upon it. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 111 

Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound 

of the war-whoop, 
And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of 

December, 
Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery 

arrows. 
Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud 

came the lightning, 
Out of the lightning thunder; x and death unseen 

ran before it. 
Frightened, the savages fled for shelter in swamp 

and in thicket, 
Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the 

brave Wattawamat, 
Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had 

a bullet 
Passed through his brain, and he fell with both 

hands clutching the greensward, 
Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land 

of his fathers. 

There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors 

lay, and above them 
Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, 2 friend of 

the white man. 
Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stalwart 

Captain of Plymouth: 



112 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

"Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his courage, his 

strength, and his stature, — ■ 
Mocked the great Captain, and called him a little 

man; but I see now 
Big enough have you been to lay him speechless 

before you!" 

Thus the first battle was fought and won by the 

stalwart Miles Standish. 
When the tidings thereof were brought to the 

village of Plymouth, 
And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wat- 

tawamat 
Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was 

a church and a fortress, 
All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, 

and took courage. 
Only Priscilla averted her face from this specter of 

terror, 
Thanking God in her heart that she had not married 

Miles Standish; 
Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming home from 

his battles, 
He should lay claim to her hand, as the prize and 

reward of his valor. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 113 
VIII 

THE SPINNING WHEEL 

Month after month passed away, and in autumn 

the ships of the merchants 
Came l with kindreds and friends, with cattle and 

corn for the Pilgrims. 
All in the village was peace; the men were intent on 

their labors, 
Busy with hewing and building, with garden plot 

and with merestead, 
Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the 

grass in the meadows, 
Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer 

in the forest. 
All in the village was peace; but at times the rumor 

of warfare 
Filled the air with alarm, and the apprehension of 

danger. 
Bravely the stalwart Miles Stanciish was scouring 

the land with his forces, 
Waxing valiant in fight 2 and defeating the alien 

armies, 
Till his name had become a sound of fear to the 

nations. 



114 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Anger was still in his heart, but at times the re- 
morse and contrition 

Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate 
outbreak, 

Came like a rising tide, that encounters the rush of 
a river, 

Staying its current a while, but making it bitter 
and brackish. 

Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new 

habitation, 
Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the 

firs of the forest. 
Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was 

covered with rushes; 
Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes 

were of paper, 
Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were 

excluded. 
There too he dug a well, and around it planted an 

orchard : 
Still may be seen to this day l some trace of the 

well and the orchard. 
Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and 

secure from annoyance, 
Raghorn, the snow-white bull, that had fallen to 

Alden 's allotment 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 115 

In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the 

night-time 
Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by 

sweet pennyroyal. 

Oft when his labor was finished, with eager feet 

would the dreamer 
Follow the pathway that ran through the woods to 

the house of Priscilla, 
Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of 

fancy, 
Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the sem- 
blance of friendship. 
Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls 

of his dwelling; 
Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the soil 

of his garden; 
Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible 

on Sunday 
Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in 

the Proverbs, 1 — 
How the heart of her husband doth safely trust in 

her always, 
How all the days of her life she will do him good, 

and not evil, 
How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh 

with gladness, 



116 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth 

the distaff, 
How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her 

household, 
Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet 

cloth of her weaving! 

So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the 
autumn, 

Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her 
dexterous fingers, 

As if the thread she was spinning were that of his 
life and his fortune, 

After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound 
of the spindle: 

"Truly, Priscilla/' he said, "when I see you spin- 
ning and spinning, 

Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of 
others, 

Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed 
in a moment; 

You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beauti- 
ful Spinner." 

Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and 
swifter; the spindle 

Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped 
short in her fingers; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 117 

While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mis- 
chief, continued: 

"You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the 
queen of Helvetia; 1 

She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of 
Southampton, 

Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and 
meadow and mountain, 

Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed 
to her saddle. 

She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed 
into a proverb. 

So shall it be with your own, when the spinning 
wheel shall no longer 

Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its cham- 
bers with music. 

Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it 
was in their childhood, 

Praising the good old times, and the days of Pris- 
cilla the spinner ! " 

Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puri- 
tan maiden, 

Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose 
praise was the sweetest, 

Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of 
her spinning, 



118 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering 

phrases of Alden: 
"Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for 

housewives, 
Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of 

husbands. 
Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, 

ready for knitting; 
Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have 

changed and the manners, 
Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old 

times of John Alden ! " 
Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his 

hands she adjusted, 
He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended 

before him, 
She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread 

from his fingers, 
Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of 

holding, 
Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled 

expertly 
Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares — for how 

could she help it? — 
Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in 

his body. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 119 

Lo! in the midst of this scene, a breathless mes- 
senger entered, 
Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible news from 

the village. 
Yes; Miles Standish was dead! — an Indian had 

brought them the tidings, — ■ 
Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the front 

of the battle, 
Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the whole of 

his forces; 
All the town would be burned, and all the people be 

murdered ! 
Such were the tidings of evil that burst on the 

hearts of the hearers. 
Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her face look- 
ing backward 
Still at the face of the speaker, her arms uplifted 

in horror; 
But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb of the 

arrow 
Piercing the heart of his friend had struck his own, 

and had sundered 
Once and forever the bonds that held him bound 

as a captive, 
Wild with excess of sensation, the awful delight of 

his freedom, 



120 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious of what 

he was doing, 
Clasped, almost with a groan, the motionless form 

of Priscilla, 
Pressing her close to his heart, as forever his own, 

and exclaiming: 
"Those whom the Lord hath united, let no man 

put them asunder ! " 1 

Even as rivulets twain, from distant and sep- 
arate sources, 
Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks, 

and pursuing 
Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and 

nearer, 
Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the 

forest ; 
So these lives that had run thus far in separate 

channels, 
Coming in sight of each other, then swerving and 

flowing asunder, 
Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and 

nearer, 
Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the 

other. 



• THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 121 

IX 

THE WEDDING-DAY 

Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the tent 
of purple and scarlet, 

Issued the sun, 1 the great High-Priest, in his gar- 
ments resplendent, 

Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his 
forehead, 

Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and 
pomegranates. 

Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor 
beneath him 

Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea at his 
feet was a laver! 

This was the wedding morn of Priscilla the Puri- 
tan maiden. 

Friends were assembled together; the Elder and 
Magistrate also 

Graced the scene with their presence, and stood 
like the Law and the Gospel, 

One with the sanction of earth and one with the 
blessing of heaven. 

Simple and brief was the wedding, as that of Ruth 
and of Boaz. 2 



122 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Softly the youth and the maiden repeated the 

words of betrothal, 
Taking each other for husband and wife in the 

Magistrate's presence, 
After the Puritan way, and the laudable custom of 

Holland. 1 
Fervently then and devoutly, the excellent Elder 

of Plymouth 
Prayed for the hearth and the home, that were 

founded that day in affection, 
Speaking of life and of death, and imploring Divine 

benedictions. 

Lo ! when the service was ended, a form appeared 
on the threshold, 

Clad in armor of steel, a somber and sorrowful 
figure ! 

Why does the bridegroom start and stare at the 
strange apparition? 

Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her face on 
his shoulder? 

Is it a phantom of air, — a bodiless, spectral illusion? 

Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come to for- 
bid the betrothal? 

Long had it stood there unseen, a guest uninvited, 
unwelcomed; 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 123 

Over its clouded eyes there had passed at times an 

expression 
Softening the gloom and revealing the warm heart 

hidden beneath them, 
As when across the sky the driving rack l of the 

rain cloud 
Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the sun by 

its brightness. 
Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its lips, but 

was silent, 
As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting inten- 
tion. 
But when were ended the troth and the prayer and 

the last benediction, 
Into the room it strode, and the people beheld with 

amazement 
Bodily there in his armor Miles Standish, the Cap- 
tain of Plymouth! 
Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said with 

emotion, "Forgive me! 
I have been angry and hurt, — too long have I 

cherished the feeling; 
I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank God! 

it is ended. 
Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in the veins 

of Hugh Standish, 



124 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in atoning for 
error. 

Never so much as now was Miles Standish the 
friend of John Alden." 

Thereupon answered the bridegroom: "Let all be 
forgotten between us, — 

All save the dear old friendship, and that shall 
grow older and dearer!" 

Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, saluted 
Priscilla, 

Gravely, and after the manner of old-fashioned 
gentry in England, 

Something of camp and court, of town and of 
country, commingled, 

Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly lauding 
her husband. 

Then he said with a smile: "I should have remem- 
bered the adage, — 

If you would be well served, you must serve your- 
self, and, moreover, 

No man can gather cherries in Kent 1 at the season 
of Christmas!" 

Great was the people's amazement, and greater 
yet their rejoicing, 
Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face of 
their Captain, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 125 

Whom they had mourned as dead; and they gath- 
ered and crowded about him, 

Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful of bride 
and of bridegroom, 

Questioning, answering, laughing, and each inter- 
rupting the other, 

Till the good Captain declared, being quite over- 
powered and bewildered, 

He had rather by far break into an Indian encamp- 
ment, 

Than come again to a wedding to which he had not 
been invited. 

Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth and stood 

with the bride at the doorway, 
Breathing the perfumed air of that warm and 

beautiful morning. 
Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely and sad 

in the sunshine, 
Lay extended before them the land of toil and 

privation ; 
There were the graves of the dead, and the barren 

waste of the seashore, 
There the familiar fields, the groves of pine, and 

the meadows; 
But to their eyes transfigured, it seemed as the 

Garden of Eden, 



126 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Filled with the presence of God, whose voice was 
the sound of the ocean. 

Soon was their vision disturbed by the noise and 

stir of departure, 
Friends coming forth from the house, and impatient 

of longer delaying, 
Each with his plan for the day, and the work that 

was left uncompleted. 
Then from a stall near at hand, amid exclamations 

of wonder, 
Alden, the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, so 

proud of Priscilla, 
Brought out his snow-white bull, obeying the hand 

of its master, 
Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its 

nostrils, 
Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed 

for a saddle. 
She should not walk, he said, through the dust and 

heat of the noonday; 
Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod along 

like a peasant. 
Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the 

others, 
Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the 

hand of her husband, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STAN DISH 127 

Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her 

palfrey. 
" Nothing is wanting now," he said with a smile, 

''but the distaff; 
Then you would be in truth my queen, my beautiful 

Bertha!" 

Onward the bridal procession now moved to their 

new habitation, 
Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing 

together. 
Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed 

the ford in the forest, 
Pleased with the image l that passed, like a dream 

of love through its bosom, 
Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the 

azure abysses. 
Down through the golden leaves the sun was pour- 
ing his splendors, 
Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches 

above them suspended, 
Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the 

pine and the fir-tree, 
Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the 

valley of Eshcol. 2 
Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral 

ages, 



128 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling 

Rebecca and Isaac/ 
Old and yet ever new, 2 and simple and beautiful 

always, 
Love immortal and young in the endless succession 

of lovers. 
So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the 

bridal procession. 




JOHN G I i EEN LEA F WI1ITTIER, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

SNOW-BOUND 

A WINTER IDYLi 

To the Memory of the Household it Describes 

THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 

" As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so 
good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not 
only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common 
Wood Fire : and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, 
so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same. " — Cor. Agrippa, 
Occult Philosophy , 2 Book I. ch. v. 

" Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow; and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

Emerson, The Snow-Storm. 

The sun that brief December day 3 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
129 



130 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Its mute and ominous prophecy, 

A portent seeming less than threat, 

It sank from sight before it set. 

A chill no coat, however stout, 

Of homespun stuff * could quite shut out, 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 

The coming 2 of the snow-storm told. 

The wind blew east; we heard the roar 3 

Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 

Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows: 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion 4 rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested 5 helmet bent 
And down his querulous 6 challenge sent. 



SNOW-BOUND 131 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 

The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

As zigzag wavering to and fro 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: 

And ere the early bedtime came 

The white drift piled the window-frame, 

And through the glass the clothes-line posts 

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 1 

So all night long the storm roared on : 

The morning broke without a sun; 

In tiny spherule 2 traced with lines 

Of Nature's geometric signs, 

In starry flake and pellicle 

All day the hoary meteor fell; 

And, when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 



132 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

Or garden-wall or belt of wood; 

A smooth white mound 1 the brush-pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road; 

The bridle-post an old man sat 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; 

The well-curb had a Chinese roof; 

And even the long sweep, high aloof, 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 

Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 2 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 

Our father 3 wasted: " Boys, a path!" 

Well pleased (for when did farmer boy 

Count such a summons less than joy?) 

Our buskins 4 on our feet we drew; 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 

We cut the solid whiteness through; 

And, where the drift was deepest, made 

A tunnel walled and overlaid 

With dazzling crystal: we had read 

Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 5 
^ And to our own his name we gave, 

With many a wish the luck were ours 

To test his lamp's supernal powers. 

We reached the barn with merry din, 



SNOW-BOUND 133 

And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
And mild reproach of hunger looked; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun l roused from sleep, 
Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 

The loosened drift its breath before; 

Low circling round its southern zone, 

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 

No church-bell 2 lent its Christian tone 

To the savage air, no social smoke 

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

A solitude 3 made more intense 

By dreary-voiced elements, 

The shrieking of the mindless wind, 

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, 

And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 

Beyond the circle of our hearth 



134 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 
We minded l that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet 2 could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship, 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls 3 that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
We piled with care our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 



SNOW-BOUND 135 

While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became, 
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels 1 showed, 
The Turk's heads on the andirons 2 glowed; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 
Whispered the old rhyme: " Under the tree, 
When fire outdoors burns merrily, 
There the witches are making tea." 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the somber green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness of their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 



136 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

We sat the clean-winged hearth 1 about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line 2 back with tropic heat; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed; 
The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette 3 on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 4 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's 5 wood. 

What matter how the night behaved? 
What matter how the north-wind raved? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 
O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray 
As was my sire's that winter day, 



SNOW-BOUND 137 

How strange it seems, with so much gone 

Of life and love, to still live on! 

Ah, brother! only I and thou 1 

Are left of all that circle now, — 

The dear home faces whereupon 

That fitful firelight paled and shone. 

Henceforward, listen as we will, 

The voices of that hearth are still; 2 

Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 

Those lighted faces smile no more. 

We tread the paths their feet have worn, 
We sit beneath their orchard trees, 
We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 
No step is on the conscious floor! 
Yet Love will dream and Faith will trust 
(Since He who knows our need is just) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees! 3 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 



138 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Across the mournful marbles i play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own! 

We sped the time 2 with stories old, 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
"The chief of Gambia's 3 golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, 4 
As if a trumpet called, I 've heard 
Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word: 
" Does not the voice of reason cry, 

Claim the first right which Nature gave, 
From the red scourge of bondage fly 

Nor deign to live a burdened slave! " 
Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's 5 wooded side; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 6 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Francois' 7 hemlock trees; 
Again for him the moonlight shone 
On Norman cap and bodiced zone; 8 



SNOW-BOUND 139 

Again he heard the violin play 
Which led the village dance away, 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
The grandam and the laughing girl, 
Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes * spread 

Mile- wide as flies the laden bee; 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 2 

The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 3 

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 

The hake-broil on the driftwood coals; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched idly on the salted hay, 
Adrift along the winding shores, 

When favoring breezes deigned to blow 

The square sail of the gundalow, 
And idle lay the useless oars. 
Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking heel, 



140 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cocheco town/ 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways), 
The story of her early days, — 
She made us welcome 2 to her home; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country-side; 
We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 3 
The loon's weird laughter far away; 
We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 



SNOW-BOUND 141 

Then, haply, with a look more grave 

And soberer tone, some tale she gave * 

From painful Sewel's 2 ancient tome, 

Beloved in every Quaker home, 

Of faith fire-winged 3 by martyrdom, 

Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, 4 — 

Gentlest of skippers, rare sea--saint! — 

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 

And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 

His portly presence, mad for food, 

With dark hints muttered under breath 

Of casting lots for life or death, 

Offered, 5 if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 

The good man from his living grave, 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

"Take, eat," he said, "and be content; 

These fishes in my stead are sent 

By Him who gave the tangled ram 

To spare the child of Abraham." 6 

Our uncle, 7 innocent of books, 

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 



142 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The ancient teachers never dumb 
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 1 
In moons and tides and weather wise, 
He read the clouds as prophecies, 
And foul or fair could well divine, 
By many an occult hint and sign, 
Holding the cunning-warded keys 
To all the woodcraft mysteries; 
Himself to Nature's heart so near 
That all her voices in his ear 
Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 
Like Apollonius 2 of old, 
Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 
Or Hermes, 3 who interpreted 
What the sage cranes of Nilus said; 
A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
Content to live where life began; 
Strong only on his native grounds, 
The little world of sights and sounds 
Wliose girdle was the parish bounds, 
Whereof his fondly partial pride 
The common features magnified, 
As Surrey hills to mountains grew 
In White of Selborne's 4 loving view, 
He told how teal and loon he shot, 
And how the eagle's eggs he got, 



SNOW-BOUND 143 

The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun; 

Till, warming with the tales he told, 

Forgotten was the outside cold, 

The bitter wind unheeded blew, 

From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink 

Went fishing down the river-brink. 

In fields with bean or clover gay, 

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 

Peered from the doorway of his cell; 
The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; 
And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

Next, the dear aunt, 1 whose smile of cheer 
And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate, 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness, 
And welcome whereso'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element, 
Whose presence seemed the sweet income 
And womanly atmosphere of home, — ■ 



144 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 

Called up her girlhood memories, 
The huskings and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance : 
A golden woof-thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mirage loomed across her way; 
The morning dew, that dried so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon; 
Through years of toil and soil and care, 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
WTio had for such but 2 thought of scorn. 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside; 3 
A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
And make her generous thought a fact, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 



SNOW-BOUND 145 

The secret of self-sacrifice. 
heart sore-tried! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, 
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things! 
How many a poor one's blessing went 
With thee beneath the low green tent 
Whose curtain never l outward swings! 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided 2 mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still? 
With me one little year ago : 3 — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain; 
And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 



146 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

I see the violet-sprinkled sod, 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, ' 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills 

The air with sweetness; all the hills 
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be nigh, 
A loss in all familiar things, 1 
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me? 
And while in life's late afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 



SNOW-BOUND 147 

And, -white against the evening star, 
The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 

The master of the district school l 

Held at the fire his favored place; 

Its warm glow lit a laughing face 

Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 

The uncertain prophecy of beard. 

He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 

Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 

Sang songs, and told us what befalls 

In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 

Born the wild Northern hills among, 

From whence his yeoman father wrung 

By patient toil subsistence scant, 

Not competence and yet not want, 

He early gained the power to pay 

His cheerful, self-reliant way; 

Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 

To peddle wares from town to town; 

Or through the long vacation's reach 

In lonely lowland districts teach, 

Where all the droll experience 2 found 

At stranger hearths in boarding round, 

The moonlit skater's keen delight, 



148 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, 
The rustic party, 1 with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 
His winter task a pastime made. 
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
He tuned his merry violin, 
Or played the athlete in the barn, 
Or held the good dame's winding yarn, 
Or mirth-provoking versions told 
Of classic legends rare and old, 
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 
Had all the commonplace of home, 
And. little seemed at best the odds 
'Twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods; 
Where Pindus-born Arachthus 2 took 
The guise of any grist-mill brook, 
And dread Olympus 3 at his will 
Became a huckleberry hill. 
A careless boy that night he seemed; 

But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be 



SNOW-BOUND 149 

Who, following in War's bloody trail, 

Shall every lingering wrong assail; 

All chains from limb and spirit strike, 

Uplift the black and white alike; 

Scatter before their swift advance 

The darkness and the ignorance, 

The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, 

Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, 

Made murder pastime, and the hell 

Of prison-torture possible; 

The cruel lie of caste refute, 

Old forms remold, and substitute 

For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, 

For blind routine, wise-handed skill; 

A school-house plant 1 on every hill, 

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 

The quick wires of intelligence; 

Till North and South together brought 

Shall own the same electric thought, 

In peace a common flag salute, 

And, side by side in labor's free 

And unresentful rivalry, 

Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest 2 that winter night 
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 



150 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 

The honeyed music of her tongue 

And words of meekness scarcely told 

A nature passionate and bold, 

Strong, self-concentered, spurning guide, 

Its milder features dwarfed beside 

Her unbent will's majestic pride. 

She sat among us, at the best, 

A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, 

Rebuking with her cultured phrase 

Our homeliness of words and ways. 

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; 
And under low brows, black with night, 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 

The sharp heat-lightnings 1 of her face 

Presaging ill to him whom Fate 

Condemned to share her love or hate. 

A woman tropical, intense 

In thought and act, in soul and sense, 

She blended in a like degree 

The vixen and the devotee, 

Revealing with each freak of feint 

The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 2 

The raptures of Siena's saint. 3 



SNOW-BOUND 151 

Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 

Had facile power to form a fist; 

The warm, dark languish of her eyes 

Were never safe from wrath's surprise. 

Brows saintly calm and lips devout 

Knew every change of scowl and pout; 

And the sweet voice had notes more high 

And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 

What convent-gate has held its lock 

Against the challenge of her knock! 

Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, 

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 

Or startling on her desert throne 

The crazy Queen of Lebanon l 

With claims fantastic as her own, 

Her tireless feet have held their way; 

And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 

She watches under Eastern skies, 

With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 

Whereof she dreams and prophesies! 

Where'er her troubled path may be, 



152 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 
The outward wayward life we see, 

The hidden springs we may not know. 
Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun, 

Through what ancestral years has run 
The sorrow with the woman born, 
What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
What set her feet in solitudes, 

And held the love within her mute, 
What mingled madness in the blood, 

A lifelong discord and annoy, 

Water of tears with oil of joy, 
And hid within the folded bud 

Perversities of flower and fruit. 
It is not ours to separate 
The tangled skein of will and fate, 
To show what metes and bounds should stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land, 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events; 

But He who knows our frame is just, 1 
Merciful and compassionate, 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is, 

That He remembereth we are dust! 



SNOW-BOUND 153 

At last * the great logs, crumbling low, 

Sent out a dull and duller glow, 

The -bull's-eye watch that hung in view, 

Ticking its weary circuit through, 

Pointed with mutely-warning sign 

Its black hand to the hour of nine. 

That sign the pleasant circle broke: 

My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 

Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 

And laid it tenderly away, 

Then roused himself to safely cover 

The dull red brand with ashes over. 

And while, with care, our mother laid 

The work aside, her steps she stayed 

One moment, seeking to express 

Her grateful sense of happiness 

For food and shelter, warmth and health, 

And love's contentment more than wealth, 

With simple wishes (not the weak, 

Vain prayers which no fulfillment seek, 

But such as warm the generous heart, 

O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 

That none might lack, that bitter night, 

For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 

The wind that round the gables roared, 



154 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 

With now and then a ruder shock, 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall; 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 

Next morn w T e wakened with the shout . 

Of merry voices high and clear; 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 

Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 



SNOW-BOUND 155 

From lip to lip; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
And woodland paths that wound between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 
Haply the watchful young men saw 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls, 
Lifting their hands in mock defense 
Against the snow-ball's compliments, 
And reading in each missive tost 1 
The charm which Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound; 

And, following where the teamsters led, 

The wise old Doctor went his round, 

Just pausing at our door to say, 

In the brief autocratic way 

Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 

Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night our mother's aid would need. 



156 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHIT TIER 

For, one in generous thought and deed, 
What mattered in the sufferer's sight 
The Quaker matron's inward light/ 

The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed? 2 

All hearts confess the saints elect 
Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 

And melt not in an acid sect 3 
The Christian pearl of charity! 

So days went on : a week had passed 
Since the great world was heard from last. 
The Almanac we studied o'er, 
Read and reread our little store 
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 4 
One harmless novel, mostly hid 
From younger eyes, a book forbid, 
And poetry, (or good or bad, 
A single book was all we had,) 
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, 
A stranger to the heathen Nine, 5 
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
The wars of David and the Jews. 
At last the floundering carrier bore 
The village paper 6 to our door. 
Lo! broadening outward as we read, 
To warmer zones the horizon spread; 



SNOW-BOUND 157 

In panoramic length unrolled 
We saw the marvel that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 

In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetus winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle bow! 
Welcome to us its week-old news, 
Its corner for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding bell and dirge of death; 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
The latest culprit sent to jail; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 

And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 
The pulse of life that round us beat; 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
And all the world was ours once more ! 

Clasp, Angel, of the backward look 



158 JOHN GREEN LEAF WHITTIER 

And folded wings of ashen gray 

And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; 
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe; 
The monographs of outlived years, 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

Green hills of life that slope to death, 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall, 
Importunate hours that hours succeed, 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; 
I hear again the voice that bids 
The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears: 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day! 

Yet, haply in some lull of life, 



SNOW-BOUND 159 

Some Truce of God * which breaks its strife, 
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngful city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew; 
And dear and early friends — the few 
Who yet remain — shall pause to view 

These Flemish pictures of old days; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 
And stretch the hands of memory forth 

To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze! 
And thanks untraced 2 to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; 
The traveler owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 



NOTES 



THE RAVEN 

37, 1. Once upon : Though the poem opens with a phrase 
that reminds one of children's stories, which usually begin 
with "Once upon a time," the thought immediately shifts 
to a heavy, solemn tone. Look at the words in the first line 
suggesting this key-note: midnight, dreary, pondered, weak, 
weary. What later passages, by a whimsical tone of humor, 
somewhat relieve the intensely melancholy drift of the poem? 

2. Napping: Notice the n-sounds beginning successive 
words. This effect, common in poetry and in the headlines 
of sensational newspapers, is called alliteration. The word 
napping rhymes with tapping at the end of the line. Such 
rhyme is called internal. Alliteration and internal rhyme 
are two of the devices used often by Poe in the poem and 
showing plainly his craftsmanship. There is much to learn 
about the form of "The Raven." It is a lyric poem, i.e., 
one that aims not to tell a story but to express the inmost 
feelings of the author as he is influenced by the world about 
him. "Snow-Bound " is also personal, while "The Court- 
ship of Miles Standish " is an epic, a poem whose principal 
object is to tell a story in the form of verse. Poe's poem is 
written in six-line stanzas, of which the first and third lines 
have internal rhyme and the second, fourth, fifth, and sixth 
rhyme. A peculiarity in the rhyme scheme is that the middle 
of the fourth line rhymes with the end of the third. The 
sixth line is much the same in each stanza. The meter is 
unusual, but the lines are not difficult to scan. In each 
stanza, eight trochaic feet, which are complete or which lack 

161 



162 NOTES 

the last unaccented syllable, make up each line, except the 
sixth line. The sixth line has four trochaic feet, lacking the 
last unaccented syllable. What elisions or substitutions do 
you discover in the one hundred and eight lines of the poem? 

3. Bleak December : The poet seems to have selected this 
phrase as being more desolate than the " lonesome October" 
of " Ulalume," a poem on about the same general theme. 

4. Ghost: An interesting metaphor. Each stick of 
wood in the fire, burning almost out, threw a nickering shadow 
which the poet calls a ghost. 

5. Sought : The word was " tried " in The American Whig 
Review, February, 1845. Why is "sought" better in this 
place? 

38, 1. Lenore: This proper name is a favorite of Poe's. 
See for instance his poem, " Lenore," a stanza of which is 
as follows: 

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! 
Let the bell toll! — a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river; 
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? — weep now or never more! 
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! 
Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! — 
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young — 
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young. 

The theme which appealed to this poet most was the idea 
of sorrow for a lost loved one. 

2. Purple curtain : There is a strange melodic fascination 
about the combination of sounds in this line, altogether 
apart from the sense. Compare a similar line in Mrs. 
Browning's "The Courtship of Lady Geraldine " : 

With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air, a purple curtain. 

3. Darkness: The poetical condensation and the inverted 
word order of the poem cause some difficulty in understand- 
ing the ideas. Here the condensation is a source of trouble 
to some readers. The idea is that when the narrator opened 
the door, he saw nothing outside. It was entirely dark. 



THE RAVEN 163 

" Darkness " is therefore to be explained as used in an inde- 
pendent phrase, or as part of some such filled out sentence 
as, "I found darkness there." 

39. 1. Dreaming dreams: Can you imagine what these 
were? 

2. Stillness: Would "darkness," the word of an early 
edition, be better here? 

3. Turning: This participle modifies " I," in the next line. 

4. Again I heard : In the poem as first printed in The 
Evening Mirror the order was, " I heard again." Why did 
the poet change? 

5. Thereat is: Did you notice that this rhymes with 
" lattice," of the preceding line? 

40, 1 . A stately Raven : Possibly his reading of Dickens's 
Barnaby Rudge may have influenced Poe to introduce a 
raven into a poem, for in reviewing Dickens's story he ex- 
plained how Dickens might have made more of the " Grip " 
of that story. Have you ever heard a raven talk? 

2. Bust of Pallas: After he had written the poem, Poe 
analyzed it most minutely; he explained for instance that 
the reason he chose a bust for the bird to alight on was that 
this would give the effect of contrast between the marble and 
the plumage; and the reason he chose a bust of Pallas in 
particular was to show the classical scholarship of the lover 
and to secure a good sonorous sound. Pallas- Athene, the 
Greek goddess corresponding to the Roman Minerva, is 
represented as armed with helmet and spear, wearing on her 
breast the shield, given to her by Zeus, with a border of 
snakes and the head of Medusa in the center. She is often 
accompanied by an owl, the symbol of wisdom, for she was 
the goddess of wisdom, war, and the liberal arts. 

3. Ebony bird: Poe was a master of epithets. Consider 
what the word " ebony" suggests to your mind as used here. 

4. Plutonian shore : That is, regions of the lower world. 
Pluto, the brother of Zeus, was the god of darkness, ruler 
over the infernal regions. 



164 NOTES 

5. Nevermore: Poe asserts that he selected this word 
after the longest consideration and most thorough search 
as the one word that best expressed the central idea he wished 
to convey in the poem. As a matter of fact it is probable 
that he stumbled on the word by chance as one fitting in 
well with his general morbid feelings; already before he 
wrote this poem he had used the expression " no more " a num- 
ber of times in his poems. If by " theme " is meant some 
truth which may be stated in an abstract, general phrase, 
the theme of "The Raven" may be expressed in several 
ways, as desolation after the blighting of hope, sorrow for a 
lost loved one, unmerciful disaster of destiny, struggle with 
the inevitable, utter despair, or, as Poe himself put it, " mourn- 
ful and never-ending remembrance." In any case, " never- 
more," whether chosen deliberately or not, seems to sum up 
the emotion. 

In the history of literature Poe plainly belongs to the 
romantic school of emotional poets like Coleridge and Shelley; 
but as is usual in American literature he was a score of years 
later in his time of production than were the English romantic 
poets to whom he was spiritually akin. In the particular 
phase of literature known as American, Poe stands alone, 
for he is different in tone and manner from the New England 
school of poets contemporary with him. 

6. To hear: That is, he wondered much that the raven 
could so plainly understand what was said to it. 

41, 1. Living human: "Sublunary" in early text. 

2. Placid bust: Does the word "placid" help to give 
significant meaning, or is it merely used to fill up the meter 
of the line? Compare "pallid bust," page 45, where the 
adjective gives an idea of dull whiteness in contrast to the 
ebony black of the bird. 

3. Then the bird said: " Quoth the raven" in early text. 

4. Startled: In order to gain the alliterative effect the 
poet changed "wondering" of the early text to "startled." 
The word modifies " I " of the next line. 



THE RAVEN 165 

42, 1. Followed fast, etc.: The lines were originally, 

Followed fast and followed faster: so, when Hope he would adjure, 
Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure, 
That sad answer, Nevermore. 

2. Sad soul: The early text read "fancy," changed to 
"sad soul" for the sake of the alliteration and the added 
seriousness of the word sad. 

3. Grim, ungainly: There is a weird effect in this line by 
the heaping up of melancholy, harsh-sounding adjectives. 

4. Velvet: Whether the width of appeal to the senses on 
pages 42 and 43 was intentional or accidental no one can 
tell. Certain it is that the range is extraordinary. The 
word "velvet" on page 42 gives the sense of touch; "vio- 
let" on page 43, the sense of sight; "perfumed," the sense 
of smell; " tinkled," the sense of hearing; "nepenthe," the 
sense of taste. Is there anything like this elsewhere in 
American poetry? How could footfalls tinkle on a carpet? 

43, 1. Seraphim. The line originally read, 

Swung by angels whose faint footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. 

2. "Wretch": The narrator is talking to himself. 

3. Nepenthe : An ancient drug used to give relief from 
sorrow or pain. 

4. Evil: Almost mechanically perfect, the poem shows 
a flaw or two, as the faulty rhyme in this line. 

5. Balm in Gilead : A valuable gum of healing properties 
referred to in Jeremiah viii, 22: " For the hurt of the daughter 
of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath 
taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no 
physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter 
of my people recovered? " As used by Poe, the expression 
means comfort, healing, relief from distress and desola- 
tion. 

44, 1. That God, we: That God [whom] we. The omis- 
sion of the relative pronoun, common in the colloquial style, 



166 NOTES 

is not infrequent in condensed poetry. What other collo- 
quialisms appear in the poem, and what is their effect? 

2. Aidenn : For Eden. 

3. Rare and radiant: Compare a line in the second stanza. 

4. Beak from out my heart: Poe speaks of these words 
as the first metaphorical expression in the poem. 

45, 1. Demon's: The earlier reading was "demon." 
2. Lamp-light: In answer to the criticism on this line, 
that the lamp could not throw the shadow of the bird on the 
floor, Poe says: "My conception was that of the bracket 
candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door 
and bust, as is often seen in the English palaces, and even in 
some of the better houses of New York " 

THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 

47, 1. In the Old Colony days: Beginning with a fairly 
definite time reference, followed by a definite place reference 
and the mention of a historical person, Longfellow suggests 
at once the atmosphere of his poem, and puts the reader in 
the frame of mind to follow the narrative of events in the 
life of Captain Miles Standish of Plymouth Colony. The 
poem, being narrative, is thus seen at the start to belong to 
the general class called epic, to which belong such poems as 
Longfellow's " Hiawatha " and " Evangeline," Scott's " Lady 
of the Lake," and Byron's " Prisoner of Chillon." Compare 
note 37, 2. 

2. Cordovan : In the Spanish town of Cordova the manu- 
facture of goatskin leather was an important industry. 

3. Miles Standish: The Plymouth captain, a real person 
of history, though the first character introduced into the 
poem is not for that reason necessarily the hero, even though 
the poem takes his name for its title. Yet, if by hero is 
meant, in the study of literature, the central male character 
of a story, i.e., the character around whom the action of the 
narrative centers, surely Standish is the hero of this poem, 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 167 

for his proxy courtship is the basis for the story and his 
actions give structure to the poem. 

As a matter of history, Captain Standish was thirty-six 
years old when the Mayflower reached Plymouth, but the 
poet, using history for the purpose of literary art, makes the 
Puritan captain seem older than thirty-six. Near the site 
of Standish' s house at Duxbury, near Plymouth (in Massa- 
chusetts), there has been erected a monument 110 feet high, 
surmounted by a statue. 

The historical basis for the poem can be easily under- 
stood from the following extract from Anderson's Grammar 
School History of the United States : 

" The first permanent settlement of New England was by 
a small band of Pilgrims, dissenters from the Church of Eng- 
land, who had fled from their own country to find an asylum 
from religious persecution. They were known in England as 
Puritans. 

" They at first went to Amsterdam, in Holland, whence 
they removed to Leyden. At Leyden they lived eleven years 
in great harmony, under the pastoral care of John Robinson; 
but, from various causes, they became dissatisfied with their 
residence, and desired to plant a colony in America, where 
they might enjoy their civic and religious rights without 
molestation. 

" As many as could be accommodated embarked on board 
a vessel called the Speedwell. The ship sailed to Southamp- 
ton, England, where she was joined by another ship called 
the Mayflower, with other Pilgrims from London. The two 
vessels set sail, but had not gone far before the Speedwell 
was found to need repairs, and they entered the port of Dart- 
mouth, England. A second time they started, but again put 
back — this time to Plymouth, where the Speedwell was 
abandoned as unseaworthy. 

" The Mayflower finally sailed alone, with about one hun- 
dred passengers, the most distinguished of whom were John 
Carver, William Brewster, Miles Standish, William Bradford, 



168 NOTES 

and Edward Winslow. After a boisterous passage they 
reached Cape Cod Bay; and there, in the cabin of the May- 
flower, they signed a compact for their government, and 
unanimously elected Carver Governor for one year. 

" Several days were spent in searching for a favorable 
locality. At length, on the 21st of December, 1620, they 
landed at a place which they called Plymouth, in memory 
of the hospitalities which had been bestowed upon them at 
the last English port from which they had sailed. The 
winter was severe, and in less than five months nearly half 
of that Pilgrim band died from the effects of exposure and 
privations, Carver and his wife being among the number. 
Bradford was thereupon elected Governor, and he continued 
during thirty years to be a prominent man in the Colony." 

48, 1. Sword of Damascus: Since the poem deals with 
real and fictitious incidents of nearly three hundred years 
ago, it is natural that there should be in the descriptions a 
number of unfamiliar terms. Standish's weapons and armor 
need explanation: the cutlass was a short, curved sword; the 
corselet, a breastplate of armor; sword of Damascus, a sword 
made of the fine steel for which the Syrian city of Damascus 
was famous — such swords were often inscribed with a 
sentence from the Koran; fowling-piece, a light gun for 
shooting birds; musket, a war gun which was in colonial 
times fired by means of a slow-match of twisted rope, but 
which is now fired by a spring lock; matchlock, originally the 
lock of a musket, but later the gun itself. Some of the other 
peculiar words found in the poem will be defined, but many 
will be left for the ingenuity and the patience of the student 
to master in an unabridged dictionary like Webster's Inter- 
national, the Century, the Standard, or, so far as completed, 
the invaluable New English Dictionary, probably the best 
dictionary ever made in any language. 

2. Curved at the : There has been much adverse criticism 
of Longfellow's meter, as being monotonous in its easy swing. 
Yet it is really this easy motion that makes the poem so 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 169 

fascinating as it is to persons just learning the pleasures of 
poetry. The lines have six accents, the number of unac- 
cented syllables varying. In general the feet, except for the 
sixth, are dactylic; the sixth is trochaic. Yet the variations 
from dactylic in the first five feet are sufficiently numerous 
to prevent the poem from being monotonously regular. The 
ninth line is an example of the normal meter — five dactylic 
feet followed by one trochaic, six accents in all; but this is 
the first entirely normal line in the poem, for in each of the 
first eight lines there are some substitutions for dactylic 
feet, usually trochaic feet. 

3. John Alden : Twenty-one years old when the colony 
was founded. 

49, 1. Not Angles: The Angles were one of the Germanic 
tribes that emigrated from the Continent to England; they 
gave their name to England. English historians are fond of 
telling the story to which Longfellow alludes. It is enter- 
tainingly told in the following extract from Merrill's English 
History : 

" It was in the year 597 that the first missionaries to the 
Saxons landed in Britain. They were sent by Pope Gregory 
the Great. Before he became Pope his pity had been moved 
by the sight of some Saxon children, sold for slaves in the 
market-place of Rome. ' Who are these beautiful boys? ' 
asked Gregory; ' and are they Christian children? ' ' No,' 
said the slave-merchant; ' they are Angles, and come from a 
heathen land.' Gregory was grieved and answered, ' If they 
were Christians, they would be angels, not Angles' (NonAngli, 
sed Angeli)." 

2. scribe : Frequently Longfellow employs a curiously 
involved word order which obscures the syntax of his sen- 
tence. In cases of doubt about his meaning, put the sen- 
tence into natural prose word order, and the difficulty will 
vanish; as for instance, here: Suddenly breaking the silence, 
Miles Standish, the Captain of Plymouth, interrupting the 
diligent scribe, spoke in the pride of his heart. By this 



170 NOTES 

change, it becomes apparent instantly that " scribe " is the 
object of the participle " interrupting." It would be a pity 
to spend much time on the grammar of this poem except in 
such cases as the above, where the solution of the grammatical 
puzzle at once clears up the meaning. 

3. Flanders: The Netherlands. Compare the adjective 
Flemish, pages 49 and 159. 

4. Arcabucero : Spanish word for archer, here meaning 
musketeer. By scanning the line, you can readily determine 
the pronunciation of the difficult word. 

50, 1. "Truly the breath," etc.: Compare Psalms xxxiii, 
6 and 20. 

2. Serve yourself: By Standish's first few speeches the 
poet conveys a distinct idea of the kind of man the captain 
was. Vivid characterization is a leading merit of the poem. 
The early introduction of the famous short, wise saying or 
adage of Captain Standish produces a humorous effect when 
the reader comes to what follows. This frolicsome humor 
shown in the poem is another of its merits, for truly the 
Pilgrim life was not all gloom. 

3. Rest : A support for the gun when being fired. 

51, 1. Laughed: Why did he laugh? 

2. Preacher: The figure of speech by which the poet 
speaks of a howitzer, or small cannon, as a preacher is called 
metaphor. What other implied comparisons do you notice 
in the poem? 

3. Sagamore : What is the effect of the introduction of 
the Indian words and names ? A sagamore was a leader of 
one of the subdivisions of a tribe; a sachem, the chief of a 
tribe; a pow-wow, a medicine-man or conjuror. Aspinet, Sa- 
moset, etc., were real names mentioned in early chronicles of 
Plymouth. 

4. Forest: Syntax? 

52, 1. Three: The condensation of poetry has already 
been mentioned, 38, 3. How do you explain the construc- 
tion of " three "? 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 171 

53, 1. Barriffe's Artillery Guide: Colonel William Barriffe, 
a Puritan soldier, wrote a book entitled Militarie Discipline; 
or, The Young Artillery Man. 

2. Commentaries of Caesar: Not knowing Latin, the 
captain read in a translation by an English scholar the com- 
mentaries written by Julius CaBsar on his wars with the Gauls. 
The account of the battle alluded to is in Section 10 of the 
second book of Caesar's commentaries. 

3. Thumb-marks thick: Alliteration. 

54, 1. Homeward bound : The time when the chief events 
of the poem happened is exactly fixed by this historical 
reference. The Mayflower sailed homeward April 5, 1621. 

55, 1. ' Better be first,' etc.: This is a fact of history, as 
can be verified by referring to Plutarch's life of CaBsar. 
Iberian means Spanish. 

56, 1. Nothing was heard, etc.: Is the repetition of this 
line a blemish? 

57, 1. Priscilla: Can you imagine to whom Alden was 
writing the letters, and what he said in them about Priscilla? 
Note the poet's method of introducing the name of the heroine 
of the poem by intimating that Alden is in love with her. 

58, 1. The Scriptures: See Genesis ii, 18. 

2. Alone in the world: " Mr„ Molines, and his wife, his 
sone and his servant, dyed the first winter. Only his daugh- 
ter Priscilla survived and married with John Alden, who are 
both living and have 11 children." (Bradford's History of 
Plymouth Plantation.) 

59, 1. Taciturn: Reserved, silent. Used in its original 
sense as derived from the Latin. 

60, 1 . Just as a timepiece : So many comparisons occur 
in the poem that before the end the effect is tiresome. The 
poet seems to strain after comparisons. What others do you 
discover? 

2. Maxim : Observe on pages 50 and 124 a word equiva- 
lent to " maxim." 

62, 1. So the strong will prevailed. Compare page 61. 



172 NOTES 

2. Hanging gardens: An allusion to the hanging gardens 
of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the world. Does 
Longfellow's nature description seem to have the real spirit 
of the woods, or does it seem written from the library? 

63, 1. Followed the flying feet: Is this a hint that Alden 
loved Priscilla before the Pilgrims left England? 

2. Astaroth . . . Baal: Ashtoreth was goddess of love, and 
Baal the chief god in the Phoenician worship referred to in 
Judges ii, 13, 1 Samuel xii, 10, and 1 Kings xi, 1-5. Note 
Alden 's Puritanical repression of his own natural emotions. 

64, 1. Children: Metaphor. The poet speaks of the may- 
flowers as children lost in the woods. 

65, 1. Carded wool: In the process of spinning, the wool 
was first picked clear of specks and burs. Then it was carded, 
that is, combed out into straight lengths, the card being 
something like the currycomb used in cleaning horses. After 
being carded, the wool was pure white. 

2. Old Puritan anthem : In the picture of colonial life the 
poet has introduced here a most characteristic touch. The 
Psalms, strong and rugged in words and music, were what 
the Pilgrims liked in their meeting-houses and in their home 
singing. That stirring exhortation to praise the Lord, viz., 
the hundredth Psalm, with music going back to the time of 
Luther, the German reformer, was a favorite song as trans- 
lated by Henry Ainsworth. Persecuted in England, Ains- 
worth in 1590 fled to Holland. Many of his commentaries 
and translations were " Imprinted at Amsterdam." 

66, 1. Life: Syntax? 

2. Hand to the plow : Luke ix, 62. 

3. Mercy endureth forever: Jeremiah xxxiii, 11. 

72, 1. Hugh Standish: Compare page 123. A paragraph 
from Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims throws light on Long- 
fellow's allusion to the ancestry of Miles Standish: "There 
are at this time in England two ancient families of the name, 
one of Standish Hall, and the other of Duxbury Park, both 
in Lancashire, who trace their descent from a common 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 173 

ancestor, Ralph de Standish, living in 1221. There seems 
always to have been a military spirit in the family. Frois- 
sart, relating in his Chronicles the memorable meeting between 
Richard II and Wat Tyler, says that after the rebel was 
struck from his horse by William Walworth, ' then a squyer 
of the kynges alyted, called John Standysshe, and he drewe 
out his sworde, and put into Wat Tyler's belye, and so he 
dyed.' For this act Standish was knighted. In 1415 an- 
other Sir John Standish fought at the battle of Agincourt. 
From his giving the name of Duxbury to the town where he 
settled, near Plymouth, and calling his eldest son Alexander 
(a common name in the Standish family) I have no doubt 
that Miles was a scion from this ancient and warlike stock." 
2. Family arms: Longfellow's description of the Standish 
family arms is difficult, for the words used in heraldry are 
strange. The coat of arms consisted of crest, shield, and 
motto. The crest was the ornament worn above the shield 
on the helmet. In the Standish coat of arms the crest was 
a cock argent, i.e., silver in color except for the comb, which 
was the fleshly tuft growing on the cock's head, and the 
wattle, which was the fleshly wrinkled excrescence growing 
under the throat of the cock. Both comb and wattle were 
gules, that is, red. The rest of the blazon, or coat of arms, 
is not given. 

73, 1. " Why don't you speak for yourself , John? " This 
question has been so often quoted that it has become a part 
of the language and is often used by persons who when they 
employ it have no consciousness of its source in this poem. 

74, 1. John Alden: The first character in this part is 
John Alden. See the similar opening of Parts II, III, and 
VI. Because of this putting of Alden to the front and letting 
him win the hand of Priscilla, some critics call him the hero 
of the poem. 

2. Apocalyptical splendors: That is, glories described by 
St. John in the Book of Revelation. See especially Revela- 
tion xxi, 10, 11, and 15. 



174 NOTES 

75, 1. Dulse: A kind of sea-weed. Other words having 
the flavor of old New England days are: " merestead " and 
"glebe," page 113. 

2. David's trangression : See 2 Samuel xi and xii. 

77, 1. Walls of its waters: See the story of the escape of 
the Israelites from Egyptian bondage, Exodus xiii and xiv, 
especially the twenty-first and twenty-second verses of the 
fourteenth chapter. 

2. Her: Syntax? 

78, 1. Seven houses: What other details do you notice 
descriptive of Plymouth? Try to form as distinct a picture 
as possible. 

2. Hainault or Brabant : Counties of the Netherlands. 

79, 1. Sped: That is, prospered, succeeded. 

80, 1. Wat Tyler: See note 72, 1. Observe how Standish 
in his anger contemptuously compares Alden with the traitor 
Wat Tyler. 

2. You, too, Brutus: For this allusion consult Shake- 
speare's Julius Ccesar. What have you observed thus far 
regarding the nature and range of Longfellow's allusions? 

81, 1. Alden was left alone: The sentence length is here 
skilfully varied. Be observant of such variations. 

2. Father who seeth in secret: Matthew vi, 4. 

82, 1. The hill: Metaphor. Elder Brewster is spoken 
of as a snow-covered hill near to heaven. Brewster was 
the ruling elder of the Plymouth church and preached 
when John Robinson, the teaching elder or pastor, was ab- 
sent. 

2. The chronicles old : In this case the old chronicle con- 
taining the sentence about the sifting of three kingdoms is 
an election sermon of 1668 by Stoughton. 

3. The skin: Actually the incident occurred in 1622, when 
Canonicus, a chief of the Narragansett tribe, sent an Indian 
named Tisquantum to Governor Bradford with a rattlesnake 
skin filled with arrows. The latter returned it filled with 
powder and bullets. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES ST AN DISH 175 

83, 1. Voice of the Elder : John Robinson. The incident is 
historical. 

85, 1 . A stir and a sound : The first forty lines of Part V are 
a general description of the actions of the Plymouth people 
on the morning of the sailing of the Mayflower; the particular 
courtship story is resumed on page 88. 

2. Mighty men of King David : 2 Samuel xxiii, 8. 

86, 1. Serried: Are you interested in Longfellow's vivid, 
specific words? 

87, 1. Beautiful were his feet: Adapted from the seventh 
verse of Chapter lii of Isaiah. 

88, 1. In the desert: Compare page 103. 

90, 1. Spake: Archaic for spoke. What is the purpose in 
the use of archaic words in the poem? 

2. Stephen and Richard and Gilbert : Their last names were 
Hopkins, Warren, and Winslow. 

3. Plymouth Rock : Consult note on the fourth line of the 
poem. At the present time in Plymouth a fragment of this 
flat granite rock is enclosed by a railing and protected by a 
canopy; the rock itself is covered by a wharf. 

4. Master: Captain. 

91, 1. Gunwale: Are you interested in this and in the 
other technical nautical words — "thwarts" and "keel," 
page 91; "windlass," "yards," and " braced," page 94? 

92, 1. " Here I remain " : Do you call this the climax of 
the poem? 

94, 1. Set his hand: See note 66, 2. 

2. The Gurnet: Gurnet's Nose is a headland at the en- 
trance of Plymouth harbor. 

3. Field of the First Encounter: The poet's appropriation 
of phrases from old chronicles is well illustrated here. A 
scouting party of Pilgrims landed from the Mayflower ahead 
of the rest. In Bradford and Winslow's journal quoted in 
Young's Chronicles there is mention of an engagement be- 
tween this scouting party and a band of Indians: " So after 
we had given God thanks for our deliverance, we took our 



176 NOTES 

shallop and went on our journey, and called this place The 
First Encounter." 

95, 1. Took courage: Acts xxviii, 15. 

96, 1. Spirit of God: Genesis i, 2: " And the earth was 
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of 
the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters." How do you account for Longfellow's making so 
many quotations from the Bible? 

99, 1. "No! " In reading Part VI aloud, boys and girls 
seem hugely to enjoy making this "No" very emphatic. 

100, 1. Like the beautiful rivers: Adapted from Genesis 
ii, 10. 

104, 1. Direful wrath: Compare Homer's Iliad, line 1: 

Sing, O muse, the direful wrath of Achilles. 

2. Manner was changed: In writing on the character of 
Priscilla, include mention of her fascinating changes in 
manner. 

3. Holy Land: An allusion to the journeyings of the 
Crusaders to the sepulchre of the Saviour. 

107, 1. Friendship was, etc.: An interesting sentence, in 
which emphasis is gained by the word order. 

2. Goliath . . . Og: 1 Samuel xvii, 4, and Deuteronomy 
hi, 11. 

3. Wampum: Beads made by North American Indians 
from colored shells. 

108, 1. Wattawamat: "Among the rest Wituwamat 
bragged of the excellency of his knife. On the end of the 
handle there was pictured a woman's face: 'but,' said he, 
' I have another at home wherewith I have killed both French 
and English, and that hath a man's face on it, and by and 
by these two must marry.' Further he said of that knife he 
there had, Hinnaim namen, hinnaim michen, matta cuts; 
that is to say, By and by it should see, and by and by it 
should eat, but not speak. Also Pecksuot, being a man of 
greater stature than the captain, told him, though he were a 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 177 

great captain, yet he was but a little man; and, said he, 
' though I be no sachem, yet I am a man of great strength 
and courage.' " (Winslow's Relation of Standish's Expedi- 
tion.) 

110, 1. The boaster: That is, Pecksuot. 

111, 1. Out of the lightning thunder: Light travels faster 
than sound. 

2. Hobomok: " Hobbamock stood by all this time as a 
spectator, and meddled not, observing how our men de- 
meaned themselves in this action. All being here ended, 
smiling, he brake forth into these speeches to the Captain: 
' Yesterday Pecksuot, bragging of his own strength and 
stature, said, though you were a great captain, yet you were 
but a little man; but to-day I see that you are big enough to 
lay him on the ground.' " (Winslow's Relation.) The poet 
has shortened the time; in the poem no day intervenes 
between the insult and the blow. 

113, 1. The ships . . . came: This is another definite 
historical reference dating the time when the imaginary 
incidents of the poem are supposed to have occurred and 
helping to determine the amount of time elapsing in the 
narrative. The ships, Anne and Little James, arrived at 
Plymouth in August, 1623. 

2. Waxing valiant in fight: Hebrews xi, 34. 

114, 1. To this day: The descendants of John Alden still 
own the land where his house stood in Duxbury, on the 
Massachusetts coast, thirty-eight miles southeast of Boston. 
On the old homestead site the Alden descendants gather from 
many parts of the country each year for a family reunion. 

115, 1. In the Proverbs: See the portion of the thirty- 
first chapter of Proverbs descriptive of the virtuous woman. 

117, 1. Bertha . . . Helvetia: Bertha, the housewifely 
queen of a Burgundian king whose territory included Hel- 
vetia (Switzerland), is represented on monuments as seated 
on her throne in the act of spinning. 

120, 1. Put them asunder: Adapted from the Biblical 



178 NOTES 

sentence, " What therefore God hath joined together, let 
not man put asunder," found in Matthew xix, 6, and Mark x, 9. 

121, 1. The sun : Compare the description of the sun, page 
87. See also the description of the high priest in the Bible 
— Exodus xxviii, 34-36. 

2. That of Ruth and of Boaz : Ruth iv, 11 and 12. 

122, 1. Laudable custom of Holland: Longfellow quotes 
the phrase from Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation: 
" May 12 was the first marriage in this place, which, accord- 
ing to the laudable custome of the Low-Countries, in which 
they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed 
by the magistrate, as being a civil thing, upon which many 
questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things 
most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the 
scripturs, Ruth iv, and no wher found in the gospell to be 
layed on the ministers as a part of their office." 

123, 1. Rack: Vapor. 

124, 1. Kent: A county in tho southern part of England. 

127, 1. Pleased with the image: What other instances 
have you found where the poet has attributed the emotions 
of men to inanimate objects? 

2. Valley of Eshcol : Numbers xiii, 23. 

128, 1. Rebecca and Isaac: Genesis xxiv, 64. 

2. Old and yet ever new: The simple themes drawn from 
the universal experiences of men are the ones that in litera- 
ture are the most popular. That is one reason why Long- 
fellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish" has been so widely 
read. ^It is a true picture of colonial days in New England, 
but more than this it is a narrative of human experiences 
that seem true to nature no matter whether the Puritan life 
is understood by the reader or not. 



SNOW-BOUND 179 

SNOW-BOUND 

129, 1. A Winter Idyl: In form, Whittier's poem, like 
Poe's and unlike Longfellow's, is personal. It aims not to tell 
a particular story, but to give a picture of the life of Whittier's 
family during a winter storm. In presenting this specific 
picture, the poet has been so true to family life that for two 
generations men everywhere who have been familiar with 
rustic scenes and people have exclaimed on the reality of 
Whittier's description. Aiming to describe just what he 
knew himself, his own household, he has succeeded in making 
a description that seems universal. Yet he has chosen to 
depict his characters in action rather than at rest. Since the 
family was kept indoors by the snow, it seems natural that 
the idyl should cover several days, as it does; the main action 
covers three days with the two intervening nights, but the 
whole time mentioned is a week. Over four hundred of the 
seven hundred and fifty-nine lines of the poem are, however, 
devoted to the characterization of the family gathered about 
the "clean-winged hearth," one evening. It is an ideal 
picturing of the life of an old-fashioned country home. This 
poem, then, called by Whittier a winter idyl and often referred 
to as a pastoral poem, may be considered lyric in character. 

The versification is simple. Most of the lines are regular 
iambic tetrameter, rhyming in couplets. Occasionally the 
lines begin with a trochaic instead of with an iambic foot, 
and there are infrequent substitutions for iambic feet in other 
parts of a line, as on page 141, where the second foot of the 
twelfth line is a spondee. Occasionally, too, three lines in 
succession, as on page 133, rhyme; or there is a line which 
jumps over a couplet to rhyme with the line that follows the 
couplet, for instance, drew, low, snow, and through, on page 
132. The student will discover for himself a few other 
irregularities in the rhyme scheme. There has been adverse 
criticism of the nature of the rhymes. The ears of critics are 
offended by such harsh rhymes as on and sun, page 131; 



180 NOTES 

breath and path, page 132; mute and foot, page 133. But in 
both meter and rhyme the poem is for the most part simple 
and pleasing. 

2. Occult philosophy: What is the use of introducing the 
poem by such a quotation as this? 

3. That brief December day: From this time reference 
are you misled into thinking that the poem will be a story? 

130, 1. Homespun stuff: Compare page 139. The poet 
explains in a brief autobiographical letter, written in 1882, 
that his mother, in addition to her ordinary house duties, kept 
busy spinning and weaving the linen and woolen cloth 
needed in the family. 

2. Coming: As in "The Raven" and "The Courtship," 
when a sentence seems difficult to understand it is well to 
try turning the words into an ordinary prose order; for 
example, told the coming of the snow-storm. Try this with 
any sentences that puzzle you at your first reading. After 
thus re-phrasing the sentences, you will be ready to express 
an opinion concerning the simplicity or the complexity, the 
clearness or the obscurity, of Whittier's sentences. You will 
know whether to call Whittier a smooth, cultured writer or 
an unpolished, homespun poet. 

3. Heard the roar: The Whittier home, a short walk 
from Haverhill on the road to Salisbury, in the northeastern 
corner of Massachusetts, was within sound of the sea. 

4. Stanchion : The description of the barn is wonderfully 
vivid. It strikes so many chords of memory that no matter 
how many times the person who has seen such places reads 
the description he thrills with enjoyment of the memories. 
Are you familiar with all the words used in the description ? 

5. Crested: Compare note 72, 2. 

6. Querulous: Poets often assign to inanimate objects or 
to the lower animals the emotions and thoughts of men. 
Here Whittier has used subjective description in saying that 
the cock sent a querulous challenge. Is the same true of 
"lusty greeting," on page 133? 



SNOW-BOUND 181 

131, 1. Like . . . ghosts: Likening the clothes-line posts 
to ghosts, Whittier has used a simile, while Poe in line 8 of 
" The Raven," likening the ember to a ghost, used a metaphor. 
What difference do you notice between simile and metaphor? 
Some of Whittier's figures of speech, like some of Longfellow's 
notable sentences, have become a part of the popular language 
and are used familiarly without consciousness of their origin. 

2. Spherule : If you were describing a snow-storm, 
would you use such words as "spherule," "geometric," 
"pellicle," and "meteor"? Since Whittier had little school- 
ing, are you not surprised that he knew such words? How 
do you suppose he learned them, and what do they mean? 

132, 1. Mound: Attribute complement of "showed." 
What difference did the snow make in the appearance of 
familiar objects near the house ? 

2. Pisa's leaning miracle : Seven miles from the mouth 
of the river Arno in Italy, is the city of Pisa, best known the 
world over for its strange leaning tower built in 1350. The 
tower, 179 feet high, is 24 feet off the perpendicular; the 
cause of the leaning was perhaps an earthquake during the 
building of the tower, but Prof. W. H. Goodyear of Brook- 
lyn declares that it was built originally as it now stands. 

3. Our father : The brisk characterization of the father in 
this poem and the appreciative characterizations of the other 
members of the household show the absurdity of such sweep- 
ing condemnation of Whittier as this by one critic: "His 
characters, where he introduces such, are commonly abstrac- 
tions with little of the flesh and blood of real life in them." 
In "Snow-Bound," at least, Whittier has presented real 
persons, not abstractions. 

4. Buskins: Foot-coverings extending half-way to the 
knee. Several hundred years before Whittier's time, the 
word buskin was used to describe the high-heeled, thick- 
soled shoes worn by tragic actors. 

5. Aladdin's wondrous cave : Old and young, school-boys 
and learned scholars, enjoy the tales of the Arabian nights. 



182 NOTES 

The one referred to by Whittier tells about the wonderful 
lamp of Aladdin. 

133, 1. Amun: Amnion, an Egyptian god often repre- 
sented as a ram. 

2. Church-bell: In his autobiographical letter, Whittier 
says that the sound of the two church-bells of Haverhill 
could be heard in the lonely homestead on Sundays. 

3. Solitude: Syntax? 

134, 1. Minded: Regarded with attention, noticed, 
observed. 

2. Buried brooklet: In his prose works Whittier often 
refers to the little brook that ran near the farmhouse. Here 
is one of his descriptions: " Our old homestead nestled under 
a long range of hills which stretched off to the west. It was 
surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast 
where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green 
meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes 
of upland. Through these a small brook, noisy enough as it 
foamed, rippled, and laughed down its rocky falls by our 
garden-side, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still 
larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in 
its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, 
the clack of which we could hear in still days across the inter- 
vening woodlands, found its way to the great river [the Merri- 
mac], and the river took up and bore it down to the great sea 
[the Atlantic Ocean]." (From "The Fish I Didn't Catch.") 

3. Wooded knolls : See note 134, 2. 

135, 1. Crane . . . trammels: The "crane" was the 
horizontal arm to which hooks called "trammels" were 
attached for holding kettles or other vessels over the fire in 
the open fireplace. 

2. Andirons : Iron horizontal supports on which the 
sticks or logs rested. "Andirons" were often wrought out 
into fantastic shapes, such as heads of Turks. 

136, 1. Clean-winged hearth: Though familiar to grand- 
fathers of Yankee origin, such expressions as this are entirely 



SNOW-BOUND 183 

outside the experience of young people of to-day and conse- 
quently need explanation. In olden days the wing of a fowl, 
usually a turkey wing, was placed beside the hearth for brush- 
ing back the ashes and keeping the hearth clean. 

2. Frost-line : Have you ever seen how the fire even in a 
coal-stove will gradually dissipate the frost on a window- 
pane? 

3. Silhouette : In the description of the scene around the 
hearth, what bookish words and what homely, colloquial 
words does the poet use? The difficulties of Whittier's vo- 
cabulary are caused by the use either of somewhat bookish 
words or of homely words descriptive of a life fast fading 
away. It is interesting to collect examples of both kinds of 
Whittier's words. 

4. Meet: Suitable. What does this adjective modify? 

5. Brown October's: A phrase reminiscent of the old 
ballads of which Whittier was fond. 

137, 1. Thou: W T hittier was a Quaker. See page 21. 

2. Voices of that hearth are still: Compare note 146, 1. 
This tone of memory, this expression of long-gathered emo- 
tions, this personal element, makes the poem clearly lyric 
rather than epic. 

3. Cypress-trees : Symbols of mourning. The lines might 
be paraphrased thus: That person is to be pitied who in his 
mourning cannot see hope beyond in heaven. 

138, 1 . Marbles : Marble monuments in a cemetery. 

2. Sped the time: Pages 138-153 give the stories told 
around the fire. 

3. " The chief of Gambia's," etc. This line is from a poem 
by Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton, which appeared in Caleb 
Bingham's The American Preceptor, a popular school-book of 
the time. 

4. Slavery's shaping hand : Compare page 149. Regard- 
ing Whittier's part in the anti-slavery movement, see page 22. 
A few years after the publication of " Snow-Bound," the poet 
edited the journal of John Woolman, a Quaker who before 



184 NOTES 

the Revolutionary War wrote quaintly but eloquently against 
slavery. The italicized lines which Whittier says were like a 
trumpet call are from a poem by Mrs. Mercy Warren, wife of 
a Revolutionary patriot of Massachusetts. 

5. Memphremagog : This lake, the name of which means 
" beautiful water," lies one-fifth in Vermont and four-fifths 
in Canada. It is described by Baedeker as enclosed by rocky 
shores and wooded hills. 

6. Samp : Coarse hominy. A word like this helps to re- 
produce the atmosphere of the curious stories of travel told 
by the father. 

7. St. Francois' : Lake St. Francis is an expansion of the 
St. Lawrence River. At the bottom of page 138 and the top 
of page 139 are given the father's memories of his Canadian 
horseback journey, when he camped with trappers and Indians 
and enjoyed the life in the French-Canadian villages. 

8. Norman cap and bodiced zone: Descriptions of the 
head-gear and dresses of the French-Canadian dancers. 

139, 1. Salisbury's level marshes: The salt marshes of 
Salisbury are over the New Hampshire line, but are, like the 
Isles of Shoals where the father fished, near the Massachusetts 
farm of the Whittiers. 

2. Swept, scythe, etc. : An alliterative line. 

3. Boar's Head: A bluff on the New Hampshire coast, 
not far from the Whittier farm. The Isles of Shoals (see page 
25) are nine rocky islands off Boar's Head, frequented as 
summer resorts because of their pure sea-air and freedom 
from mosquitoes. 

140, 1. Cochecho town: The city of Dover, New Hamp- 
shire, settled in 1623, lies on the Cocheco River. 

2. She made us welcome : That is, she told the hearth- 
side group all about her early home. What lines give the 
mother's contribution to the talk? What idea do you form 
in your mind of the appearance and characteristics of the 
mother? 

3. Piscataqua: A New Hampshire river. 



SNOW-BOUND 185 

141, 1. Some tale she gave: Compare the nature of the 
tales told by the mother with those told by the father. 

2. Sewel's ancient tome: William Sewel was a Dutch 
Quaker whose History of the Quakers was translated into 
English and several times reprinted. 

3. Faith fire-winged: In the early days of the Quaker 
faith in England and the colonies, large numbers of its 
adherents were burned to death or hanged. 

4. Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint : Thomas Chalkley 
was a Quaker preacher who was born in 1675. The greater 
part of his life he spent in traveling about New England and 
the southern colonies preaching. The quaint character of 
his Journal, published in his seventy-second year, is evident 
in the following extract: "To stop their murmuring, I told 
them they should not need to cast lots, which was usual in 
such cases, which of us should die first, for I would freely 
offer up my life to do them good. One said, ' God bless you! 
I will not eat any of you.' Another said he would die before 
he would eat any of me, and so said several. I can truly 
say, on that occasion, at that time, my life was not dear to 
me, and that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition; 
and as I was leaning over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully 
considering my proposal to the company, and looking in my 
mind to Him that made me, a very large dolphin came up 
towards the top or surface of the water and looked me in the 
face; and I called the people to put a hook into the sea and 
take him, for here is one come to redeem me (I said to them) . 
And they put a hook into the sea, and the fish readily took 
it, and they caught him. He was longer than myself. I 
think he was about six feet long, and the largest that ever I 
saw. This plainly showed us that we ought not to distrust 
the providence of the Almighty. The people were quieted 
by this act of Providence, and murmured no more. We 
caught enough to eat plentifully of till we got into the capes 
of Delaware." 

5. Offered: The subject is "Who," six lines above. 



186 NOTES 

6. Child of Abraham: Consult Genesis xxii, 13. 

7. Our uncle : How do the tales told by the uncle differ 
from those told by the mother and father? 

142, 1. Lyceum: Characteristic of the era in New Eng- 
land was the lyceum, a building or an association for the 
teaching of the people by public lectures. Many persons who 
had scanty opportunities for schooling were able to acquire 
a fair education by attendance at the lyceum and by reading. 
Whittier himself thus gained much. In his later years he 
became an enthusiastic patron of the Amesbury Lyceum; 
there such men as Beecher and Phillips lectured at his invi- 
tation. In recognition of his attainments he received, the 
year of the publication of "Snow-Bound," the Harvard 
honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and three years later, in 
1869, was made a trustee of Brown University. 

2. Apollonius: Apollonius of Tyana was regarded as a 
worker of miracles. He lived in the time of Christ. 

3. Hermes: Compare Milton's lyric, " II Penseroso." 
Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian philosopher who lived 
in Alexandria early in the Christian era. He is said to have 
invented the art of writing in hieroglyphics. 

4. White of Selborne : Gilbert White, author of Natural 
History and Antiquities of Selborne, is said by the poet to 
have magnified the Surrey hills of southern England just as 
the simple, guileless uncle magnified the common features 
of his immediate neighborhood in northeastern Massachu- 
setts. 

143, 1. The dear aunt : The verb for this subject is found 
in the first line of page 144. What was the character of the 
aunt? How do you picture her personal appearance? Miss 
Hussey had the reputation of making the best squash pies 
that were ever baked. 

144, 1. Warp of circumstance: In "Snow-Bound," 
Whittier himself weaves through the warp of circumstantial 
details of his home life something of the woof-thread of 
poetical romance. The details do not seem merely petty 



SNOW-BOUND 187 

and commonplace, but through the spirit of the writer be- 
come invested with poetic sentiment and charm. In the 
history of literature, Whittier belongs to the great world- 
movement spoken of on page 27, his first model being a 
leader in that movement, Robert Burns. Whittier's par- 
ticular part in the movement, as exemplified in his "Snow- 
Bound," is that of the accurate, sensible observer of rustic 
life. In contrast to Longfellow, who is the cultured library 
poet, Whittier stands for specificness and accuracy of homely 
observation. Whittier's minuteness of detail is admirably 
suggested by his own phrase on page 159 when he speaks of 
his poem as containing " Flemish pictures of old days." The 
Flemish artists were distinguished by their attention to 
minute detail. In the particular phase of literature known 
as American, Whittier is one of the chief writers of the group 
of New England poets who, about the time of the publication 
of his first poem, entered upon a long period of literary 
supremacy in America. 

2. But: Part of speech? 

3. Beside : What other examples do you notice of prepo- 
sitions following their objects? 

145, 1. Never outward swings: It is a beautiful, pathetic 
figure of speech by which the poet thus refers to the death 
of his elder sister. 

2. Motley-braided : Braided in many colors, like the old- 
fashioned rag carpets still to be seen in some country dis- 
tricts. Note that Whittier uses few hyphenated adjectives, in 
contrast to Tennyson, for instance, in his Idylls of the King. 

3. One little year ago : Whittier's younger sister died in 
1864, the year before he wrote the poem. 

146, 1. A loss in all familiar things: In his biography of 
Whittier, George R. Carpenter refers to the memory mood 
in which the poem was written: " It was an old man, tender- 
hearted, who thus drew the portraits of the circle of which 
he and his brother alone survived. The mood was one of 
wistful and reverential piety — the thoughtful farmer's 



188 NOTES 

mood, in many a land, under many a religion, recalling the 
ancient scenes more clearly as his memory for recent things 
grows less secure, living with fond regret the departed days, 
yearning for friends long vanished. Our changed national 
life, the passing away of the old agricultural conditions, the 
breaking up of ancient traditions, has made this wistful and 
reverential mood a constant element in our recent literature. 
In poems and novels we have delighted to reconstruct the 
past, as the Arab-singers before Mohammed began their 
lays with the contemplation of a deserted camping-ground. 
It was Whittier that introduced the new theme, best described 
in the closing lines of his own poem." 

147, 1. Master of the district school: Compare Gold- 
smith's village schoolmaster in " The Deserted Village." It 
is said that William Haskell, the schoolmaster of Whittier's 
poem, never knew that he had been described in the poem. 

2. Experience: One of the subjects of the verb " made," 
on page 148. 

148, 1 . Rustic party : Are the three games mentioned still 
played at parties? 

2. Pindus-born Arachthus : The Arachthus is one of five 
rivers which rise in Pindus, the great mountain-chain of 
Greece. 

3. Olympus : The Grecian mountain on the top of which 
the gods were said to dwell. Like Charles Lamb, also lack- 
ing college education, Whittier is even fonder of classical 
allusions than the college trained Longfellow. 

149, 1. Plant: This is one of the verbs in the series 
beginning "shall . . . assail," whose subject is " Who." 

2. Another guest : Harriet, daughter of Judge Livermore, 
of New Hampshire, a woman of great abilities and peculiari- 
ties. She was once an independent missionary to the western 
Indians, whom she believed to be the descendants of the lost 
tribes of Israel. At another time she went about proclaiming 
the second coming of Christ (see page 151). Her travels are 
not exaggerated by the poet. 



SNOW-BOUND 189 

150, 1. Heat-lightnings: A bold metaphor. 

2. Petruchio's Kate: In The Taming of the Shrew by- 
Shakespeare. 

3. Siena's saint : St. Catherine. 

151, 1. Crazy Queen of Lebanon : Lady Hester Stanhope, 
daughter of the third Earl Stanhope. She was the most 
trusted confidante of her uncle, William Pitt; on his death 
she received a royal pension of £1200 a year. Becoming 
disgusted with society life, she retired for a while into Wales, 
and in 1810 left England to wander about until her death in 
1829 among the half savage people of Mount Lebanon. 
Harriet Livermore lived with her for a time until the two 
quarreled " in regard to two white horses with red marks on 
their backs which suggested the idea of saddles," on which 
Lady Stanhope expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. 

152, 1. But He, etc. : The meaning is as follows: But He 
who understands our physical limitations is just, merciful, 
and compassionate; and the words, He remembers we are 
dust, are full of sweet assurances and hope for all of us. 

153, 1. At last: Note the transition phrase. Having 
gathered the family around the hearth and given us their 
stories and pictures, the poet breaks up his family circle with 
the dying of the fire, that evening. 

156, 1. Quaker matron's inward light: The Quakers be- 
lieved that within themselves there burned a light from God 
which should guide each one independently in his daily acts. 

2. Calvin's creed: Born in 1509, John Calvin spent most 
of his life in Geneva, Switzerland, preaching certain specific 
religious doctrines which came to be called Calvinism: 1. 
Particular Election; 2. Particular Redemption; 3. Moral 
inability in a fallen state; 4. Irresistible grace; 5. Final 
perseverance. The Puritans were rigid Calvinists, stern 
and austere in their beliefs, but stirred by an intensely ideal, 
imaginative faith. 

3. Acid sect: See page 24 for light on Whittier's breadth 
of sympathy. 



190 NOTES 

4. Scarce a score : Probably no American poet had fewer 
books in boyhood than Whittier. At home he had access to 
a few miscellaneous volumes, mostly sermons, tracts, biog- 
raphies, or journals of famous Quakers. He and his sister 
read at night by candles one of the Waverley novels. The 
book of poetry referred to four lines below was an epic poem, 
Davideis, by the Quaker poet, Thomas Elwood, a friend of 
John Milton's. In his autobiographical letter WhittLer says 
that as a boy he was a close student of the Bible. 

5. The heathen Nine : The nine muses. 

6. Village paper: Whittier's description of the general 
contents of the village paper of his boyhood needs explana- 
tion with regard to several points. The "painted Creeks" 
referred to on page 157 were the Creek Indians at that time 
being removed from Georgia and driven beyond the Missis- 
sippi. "Daft McGregor" was Sir Gregor McGregor who was 
attempting to found a colony in Costa Rica. " Taygetus " 
was a mountain of Greece. " Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks" 
were inhabitants of the mountainous district of Maina, in 
the Greek province of Laconia. The Mainotes, pronounced 
mi-nots, were a wild, brave people who, under the leadership 
of Ypsilanti, were prominent in the long war for freedom 
from the Turks. " Vendue sales," page 157, were sales at 
auction, still common in the central part of New York state 
under the name " vandoo." The point of the whole descrip- 
tion is in the fifth from the last line on page 157, where the 
word " embargo " means restraint, and where it is suggested 
that the village newspaper broke the bounds of the snow and 
let the thoughts of the household move out across the world. 

The interest that Whittier had in the. local paper after he 
was nineteen was often greatly increased by his seeing his 
poems in print. It is said that the first newspaper containing 
a poem of his was thrown to him in the field where he was 
working with his uncle. 

159, 1. Truce of God: An allusion to a formal cessation 
of baronial petty warfare in the middle ages. The church 



SNOW-BOUND 191 

forbade any baron to attack another between sunset on 
Wednesday and sunrise on the following Monday. The 
point of the allusion is that the poet hopes that the worldly 
man's eyes in some reminiscent moment when he has broken 
loose from the struggle of life shall grow wet with tears as 
he thinks of his boyhood winter joys. 

2. Thanks untraced : The last twenty lines of " Snow- 
Bound " beautifully convey the poet's idea of the mission and 
the reception of his poem. 



EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 



I. THE RAVEN 

1. Relate briefly in simple prose the contents of the 
entire poem. 

2. What are the merits of Poe's poetry compared with 
your prose? 

3. Try your hand at imitating Poe in a stanza of your 
own. 

4. Comparison of Poe's " Raven" with Wordsworth's 
"Green Linnet," Shelley's "To a Skylark," Keats 's "Ode 
to a Nightingale," or any other lyric which you particu- 
larly enjoy. 

5. The circumstances of the composition of "The 
Raven." 

6. Just what were the actions of the person who is 
in this poem telling his strange experience? 

7. What were the actions of the bird? 

8. What are your feelings when you finish reading the 
poem aloud? 

9. Knowing something about Poe, Longfellow, and 
Whittier, could you guess which one of the three must 
have written "The Raven?" Reasons. 

10. What makes the poem fascinating? 

11. Strange or uncanny experiences of your own. 

12. Contrast the metrical form of this poem with 
that of the other two poems printed in this book. 

13. Poe's place in literature. 

14. Comparison of the language and the sentence 

193 



194 EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 

structure of Poe, Longfellow, and Whittier as seen in 
these three representative American poems. 

II. THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 

1 . In a common history of the United States or in an 
encyclopedia, read the account of Massachusetts colonial 
life, and compare it with Longfellow's poem, in contents 
and form. 

2. Condense the entire poem into a single narrative 
paragraph of about one hundred and fifty words, using 
as topic sentence a statement of the theme of the poem. 

3. As an exercise in the evaluation of words, add to 
your paragraph or subtract from it so as to make it pre- 
cisely one hundred and fifty words long. 

4. From what you have read of Longfellow's life and 
works, do you think he might have made a successful 
novel out of the material contained in this poem, if he 
had tried? Give reasons for your answer. 

5. The courtship in some novel that you have read 
contrasted with that related in the poem. 

6. A courtship as disclosed in a package of old letters 
or in a dozen souvenir postal cards. 

7. (a.) Character studies in the poem. 

(6.) Do Miles Stan dish, John Alden, and Priscilla seem 
like real persons? 

8. Describe the house in which Standish lived. Sup- 
plement by your imagination the details of the poem. 

9. Describe the Captain. 

10. After reading Part I aloud, would you prefer to 
read the rest of the story in poetry or in prose? Reasons. 

11. The picture that is in your mind of the scene 
between Alden and Priscilla in Part III. 

12. Could you keep your face straight while you were 
reading of the proposal? Why or why not? 

13. Do the girls like this part of the poem best? 



EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 195 

14. Do the boys prefer Part IV to Part III? 

15. Are you more interested in the descriptions or 
in the exciting passages? Why? 

16. Do you enjoy reading aloud any part of the poem? 

17. Describe Alden's new habitation. 

18. Would you omit any of the lines of the poem? 
If so, which? 

19. Describe the wedding procession. 

20. Write nine sentences each containing in your 
own words the substance of one of the parts of the 
poem. 

21. Imaginary account of the courtship of Miles 
Standish and Rose. 

22. Indian stories that you know. 

23. Narratives of several battles. 

24. Accounts of pioneer life. 

25. A wedding. 

26. What makes Longfellow's poem more interesting 
than Poe's? 

27. The place of "The Courtship of Miles Standish" 
in the history of literature. 

III. SNOW-BOUND 

1. Early nineteenth century farm life of New England. 

2. What do your grandparents say about the truth- 
fulness of the picture given in Whittier's winter idyl? 

3. The meaning of idyl. 

4. Even though you have never lived on a farm, can 
you appreciate and enjoy Whittier's poem? 

5. If you have lived on a farm, are you prepared to 
say that the poem seems true to life? 

6. The family described in "Snow-Bound. " 

7. Nine pictures of real persons. 

8. Description of the storm, of the barn, of the house, 
and of the scenes outside the house. 



196 EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 

9. Description of a snow-storm that has kept you 
from school. 

10. Experiences sliding down straw-stacks, leaping 
from beams in the barn into the haymow, trying to milk 
cows or do other farm chores. 

11. Description of a fine new hip-roofed barn. 

12. A lonely farmhouse in winter. 

13. Summer scenes on a farm that you have visited. 

14. Winter and summer in the city. 

15. Explain how to build a furnace fire, or how to cut 
kindling, or how to keep from being run over. 

16. The relative advantages of city and country life. 

17. Chores of a city boy. 

18. Life in a city apartment or flat contrasted with the 
boyhood life of Whittier. 

19. State in a few words the theme of "Snow-Bound," 
and then in one paragraph write a well-proportioned sum- 
mary of the entire poem. 

20. Whittier's life as a reformer and poet. 

21. Whom do you admire the most, — Poe, Longfellow, 
or Whittier? Why? 

22. On comparing Whittier's " Snow-Bound " and 
Emerson's " Snow-Storm," what difference do you observe 
in the metrical form and in the contents? 

23. Using your imagination to fill out the details, give 
as vividly as you can, with gestures if they will help, the 
full picture that is in your mind of the persons gathered 
around the hearth in the evening. Do not tell any of the 
conversation, simply describe the scene at some moment. 

24. The fireside conversation. 

25. Name six American and six English political and 
literary contemporaries of Whittier. 

26. The characteristics of the literary era to which 
Whittier belonged. (See page 27.) 

27. Do you like " Snow-Bound " better than either " The 
Raven" or "The Courtship of Miles Standish"? Reasons. 



C 32 89 



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